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@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +dtach is a program written in C that emulates the detach feature of +screen, which allows a program to be executed in an environment that is +protected from the controlling terminal. For instance, the program under +the control of dtach would not be affected by the terminal being +disconnected for some reason. + +dtach was written because screen did not adequately meet my needs; I did +not need the other features of screen, such as its support of multiple +terminals or its terminal emulation support. screen was also too big, +bulky, and the source code was also difficult to understand. + +screen also interfered with my use of full-screen applications such as +emacs and ircII, since screen excessively interprets the stream between +the program and the attached terminals. dtach does not have a terminal +emulation layer, and passes the raw output stream of the program to the +attached terminals. The input processing that dtach performs is +scanning for the detach character (which signals dtach to detach from +the program) and processing the suspend key (which tells dtach to +temporarily suspend itself without affecting the running program), which +can both be disabled if desired. + +Contrary to screen, dtach has minimal features, and is extremely tiny. +The small size allows it to be more easily audited for bugs and security +holes, and also allows it to fit in environments where space is limited, +such as on rescue disks. + +dtach has only been tested on the Linux/x86 platform, however it should +be easily portable to other variants of Unix. It currently assumes that +the host system uses POSIX termios, and has a working forkpty function +available. |