Disable kernel interrupt on windows

[lgeiger]

Unfortunately windows doesn't support signals.

Node.js docs:

Note: Windows does not support sending signals, but Node.js offers some emulation with process.kill(), and ChildProcess.kill(). Sending signal 0 can be used to test for the existence of a process. Sending SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGKILL cause the unconditional termination of the target process.

Closes #592

[nikitakit]

This incompatibility with Windows is certainly a good catch!

Do you think it would be worthwhile to implement a workaround using the Windows event APIs, rather than simply declaring interruption to be unsupported?

IIRC the notebook server on Windows supports interrupting kernels -- and it looks like the code responsible can be found here, here, and here.

Note that I don't use Windows myself, so I won't be able to evaluate/test this.

[lgeiger]

Thanks for the links! Implementing a workaround would definitely be a better solution and we could use it in nteract as well.

That said, I'm not using Windows either and have no knowledge about Windows events so I won't implement this any time soon.

I guess disabling the feature is the best we can do so far.

[nikitakit]

@lgeiger That's fair. It then makes sense to keep an issue filed in case someone with Windows wants to contribute a workaround.

[lgeiger]

It then makes sense to keep an issue filed in case someone with Windows wants to contribute a workaround.

Totally agree 👍
Would you like to open one?