[Gimp-developer] A Process for Each Plugin

[Ahmad Nouralizadeh <ahmad mlists gmail com>]

Hi,
I wonder why GIMP spawns a separate process for each plugin (e.g., by
calling g_spawn_async() @app/plug-in/gimpplugin.c:368). For example, I
opened an image and the contents of the image was loaded in the memory of
process gimp. But when I applied a VanGogh filter on the image, a new
process, van-gogh-lic, started and processed the image contents.
- Why another process is forked? AFAIK, a fork is used only for the cases
when the tasks of the parent and child are completely different.
- How does van-gogh-lic access the contents of the image, while it is
loaded in its parent (i.e., the gimp process)?
- I also traced the parent process using Pin, which showed that during the
application of the filter, many accesses were made by gimp. Why?
Regards.