.NET 11 Preview - Starting Suspended Processes in macOS

In a previous post, “.NET 11 Preview - Starting A Detached Process”, we looked at how to start a detached process.

A detached process is one that will continue running even after the process that starts it exits.

In this post we will look at something similar - how to start a Suspended process. A suspended process is one that is started, but not executing, hence the name. It is in a suspended state.

Take the following example:

var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("notepad.exe")
{
	StartSuspended = true
};

using (var process = Process.Start(startInfo))
{
  var handle = process.SafeHandle;

  // Do your custom init here

  await Task.Delay(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
  handle.Resume();
}

Here, we are starting notepad in a suspended state.

We are then doing some custom initialization prior to resuming the process.

Custom initialization in this case is something like spinning up and attaching a debugger.

You will see after a 10 second pause, the notepad window appears.

From preview 7, this now also works in macOS.

TLDR

You can now start processes in suspended state.

Happy hacking!