I'm starting to regret giving away my RKMs... Can anyone recommend a good discussion or primer on process initialisation as it applies to MorphOS? My goal is to create a new process that doesn't have to initialise itself any differently to a 'normal', user-started process.

I'm particularly interested to know how to initialise the following tags marked with a '*'. Is it acceptable for the parent process to simply copy certain fields from its own process structure to pair with these tags?

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RKRMs never covered any dos.library calls... I dont know why, I always found it weird.

To create new process just call:

struct Process *proc = CreateNewProcTags(NP_Entry, MyProcessFunc, NP_Name, "My Child Process", NP_CodeType, CODETYPE_PPC, TAG_DONE);

You may want to pass additional parameters to your entry. Lets say your process call is like this:

void MyProcessFunc(struct Data *data, CONST_STRPTR path) { /.../ }

You just add NP_PPC_Arg1, data, NP_PPC_Arg2, "RAM:MyPath" to tag list.

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Just let the OS copy those fields for you.

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If you want to pass your own filehandles for input, output and error you can Open() one yourself. CloseInput/Output/Error is just a boolean flag to indicate if the launched process should close those handles automatically when the launched process ends.

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You can pass your own lock here... but it is not necessary.

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Dont worry about this one...

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This is used as a reference pointer for DOS requesters. You dont have to worry about this either...

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You can set homedir here but it is not necessary.

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This mean local environment variables.

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Too low level to me. I have never used, never needed, never had to understand.

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Yes it is, however, I prefer using NP_PPC_Arg tags.

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This is handled by process creation. You can use this tag to get TaskMsgPort of newly created process:

struct MsgPort *port;

NP_TaskMsgPort, &port

This can be used for interprocess communication and its advantage is that you can avoid usual handshaking mechanism with parent and child process.

[ Edited by itix 08.03.2016 - 11:56 ]

This is probably the best book for dos.library info.

http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/amiga/books/pdf/The_AmigaDOS_Manual_Third_Edition.zip

Thank you both for your helpful replies.

Child processes seem to have a zeroed pr_CLI and, from what I've observed, that typically results in the assumption that the program must then have been started from Ambient - after which WaitPort() and GetMsg() are typically called by the program on its own pr_MsgPort in anticipation of an initialisation message.

If a parent process creates such a child process, do I assume that the parent has to send this initialisation message to the child?

pr_Cli points to a struct CommandLineInterface, while pr_ConsoleTask is the message port of the console handler. If you want to check where your program was started from, you should do it from the main task, and pass the info to the sub-tasks.
From the top of my head HomeDir is PROGDIR:, while CurrentDir is the current working directory.

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Nope. Only if you are trying to emulate Ambient launch but for this purpose you can use wbstart.library.

If the subprocess is your own it is up to you... you can use WaitPort()/GetMsg() mechanism to send a message to your subprocess if deemed useful.