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Dustin Howett @DHowett <duhowett@microsoft.com> 2020-08-16 2023-12-12 #7335

Console Allocation Policy

Abstract

Due to the design of the console subsystem on Windows as it has existed since Windows 95, every application that is stamped with the IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_CUI subsystem in its PE header will be allocated a console by kernel32.

Any application that is stamped IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI will not automatically be allocated a console.

This has worked fine for many years: when you double-click a console application in your GUI shell, it is allocated a console. When you run a GUI application from your console shell, it is not allocated a console. The shell will not wait for it to exit before returning you to a prompt.

There is a large class of applications that do not fit neatly into this mold. Take Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua, or even VBScript: These languages are not relegated to running in a console session; they can be used to write fully-fledged GUI applications like any other language.

Because their interpreters are console subsystem applications, however, any user double-clicking a shortcut to a Python or Perl application will be presented with a console window that the language runtime may choose to garbage collect, or may choose not to.

If the runtime chooses to hide the window, there will still be a brief period during which that window is visible. It is inescapable.

Likewise, any user running that GUI application from a console shell will see their shell hang until the application terminates.

All of these scripting languages worked around this by shipping two binaries each, identical in every way expect in their subsystem fields. python/pythonw, perl/perlw, ruby/rubyw, wscript/cscript.

PowerShell1 is waiting to deal with this problem because they don't necessarily want to ship a pwshw.exe for all of their GUI-only authors. Every additional *w version of an application is an additional maintenance burden and source of cognitive overhead2 for users.

On the other side, you have mostly-GUI applications that want to print output to a console if there is one connected.

These applications are still primarily GUI-driven, but they might support arguments like /? or --help. They only need a console when they need to print out some text. Sometimes they'll allocate their own console (which opens a new window) to display in, and sometimes they'll reattach to the originating console. VSCode does the latter, and so when you run code from CMD, and then exit CMD, your console window sticks around because VSCode is still attached to it. It will never print anything, and your only option is to close it.

There's another risk in reattaching, too. Given that the shell decides whether to wait based on the subsystem field, GUI subsystem applications that reattach to their owning consoles just to print some text end up stomping on the output of any shell that doesn't wait for them:

C:\> application --help

application - the interesting application
C:\> Usage: application [OPTIONS] ...

(the prompt is interleaved with the output)

Solution Design

I propose that we introduce a fusion manifest field, consoleAllocationPolicy, with the following values:

  • absent
  • detached

This field allows an application to disable the automatic allocation of a console, regardless of the process creation flags passed to CreateProcess and its subsystem value.

It would look (roughly) like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
  <application>
    <windowsSettings>
      <consoleAllocationPolicy xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2024/WindowsSettings">detached</consoleAllocationPolicy>
    </windowsSettings>
  </application>
</assembly>

The effects of this field will only apply to binaries in the IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_CUI subsystem, as it pertains to the particulars of their console allocation.

All console inheritance will proceed as normal. Since this field takes effect only in the absence of console inheritance, CUI applications will still be able to run inside an existing console session.

policy behavior
absent default behavior
detached The new process is not attached to a console session (similar to DETACHED_PROCESS) unless one was inherited.

An application that specifies the detached allocation policy will not present a console window when launched by Explorer, Task Scheduler, etc.

Interaction with existing APIs

CreateProcess supports a number of process creation flags that dictate how a spawned application will behave with regards to console allocation:

  • DETACHED_PROCESS: No console inheritance, no console host spawned for the new process.
  • CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE: No console inheritance, new console host is spawned for the new process.
  • CREATE_NO_WINDOW: No console inheritance, new console host is spawned for the new process.
    • this is the same as CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE, except that the first connection packet specifies that the window should be invisible

Due to the design of CreateProcess and ShellExecute, this specification recommends that an allocation policy of detached override the inclusion of CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE in the dwFlags parameter to CreateProcess.

Note ShellExecute passes CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE by default on all invocations. This impacts our ability to resolve the conflicts between these two APIs--detached policy and CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE--without auditing every call site in every Windows application that calls ShellExecute on a console application. Doing so is infeasible.

Application impact

An application that opts into the detached console allocation policy will not be allocated a console unless one is inherited. This presents an issue for applications like PowerShell that do want a console window when they are launched directly.

Applications in this category can call AllocConsole() early in their startup to get fine-grained control over when a console is presented.

The call to AllocConsole() will fail safely if the application has already inherited a console handle. It will succeed if the application does not currently have a console handle.

Note Backwards Compatibility: The behavior of AllocConsole() is not changing in response to this specification; therefore, applications that intend to run on older versions of Windows that do not support console allocation policies, which call AllocConsole(), will continue to behave normally.

New APIs

Because a console-subsystem application may still want fine-grained control over when and how its console window is spawned, we propose the inclusion of a new API, AllocConsoleWithOptions(PALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS).

AllocConsoleWithOptions

// Console Allocation Modes
typedef enum ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE {
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_DEFAULT    = 0,
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NEW_WINDOW = 1,
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NO_WINDOW  = 2
} ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE;

typedef enum ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT {
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT_NO_CONSOLE       = 0,
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT_NEW_CONSOLE      = 1,
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT_EXISTING_CONSOLE = 2
} ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT, *PALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT;

typedef
struct ALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS
{
    ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE mode;
    BOOL useShowWindow;
    WORD showWindow;
} ALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS, *PALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS;

WINBASEAPI
HRESULT
WINAPI
AllocConsoleWithOptions(_In_opt_ PALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS allocOptions, _Out_opt_ PALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT result);

AllocConsoleWithOptions affords an application control over how and when it begins a console session.

[!NOTE] Unlike AllocConsole, AllocConsoleWithOptions without a mode (ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_DEFAULT) will only allocate a console if one was requested during CreateProcess.

To override this behavior, pass one of ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NEW_WINDOW (which is equivalent to being spawned with CREATE_NEW_WINDOW) or ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NO_WINDOW (which is equivalent to being spawned with CREATE_NO_CONSOLE.)

Parameters

allocOptions: A pointer to a ALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS.

result: An optional out pointer, which will be populated with a member of the ALLOC_CONSOLE_RESULT enum.

ALLOC_CONSOLE_OPTIONS
Members

mode: See the table below for the descriptions of the available modes.

useShowWindow: Specifies whether the value in showWindow should be used.

showWindow: If useShowWindow is set, specifies the "show command" used to display your console window.

Return Value

AllocConsoleWithOptions will return S_OK and populate result to indicate whether--and how--a console session was created.

AllocConsoleWithOptions will return a failing HRESULT if the request could not be completed.

Modes
Mode Description
ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_DEFAULT Allocate a console session if (and how) one was requested by the parent process.
ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NEW_WINDOW Allocate a console session with a window, even if this process was created with CREATE_NO_CONSOLE or DETACHED_PROCESS.
ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_NO_WINDOW Allocate a console session without a window, even if this process was created with CREATE_NEW_WINDOW or DETACHED_PROCESS
Notes

Applications seeking backwards compatibility are encouraged to delay-load AllocConsoleWithOptions or check for its presence in the api-ms-win-core-console-l1 APISet.

Inspiration

Fusion manifest entries are used to make application-scoped decisions like this all the time, like longPathAware and heapType.

CUI applications that can spawn a UI (or GUI applications that can print to a console) are commonplace on other platforms because there is no subsystem differentiation.

UI/UX Design

There is no UI for this feature.

Capabilities

Accessibility

This should have no impact on accessibility.

Security

One reviewer brought up the potential for a malicious actor to spawn an endless stream of headless daemon processes.

This proposal in no way changes the facilities available to malicious people for causing harm: they could have simply used IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI and not presented a UI--an option that has been available to them for 35 years.

Reliability

This should have no impact on reliability.

Compatibility

An existing application opting into detached may constitute a breaking change, but the scope of the breakage is restricted to that application and is expected to be managed by the application.

All behavioral changes are opt-in.

EXAMPLE: If Python updates python.exe to specify an allocation policy of detached, graphical python applications will become double-click runnable from the graphical shell without spawning a console window. However, console-based python applications will no longer spawn a console window when double-clicked from the graphical shell.

In addition, if python.exe specifies detached, Console APIs will fail until a console is allocated.

Python could work around this by calling AllocConsole or new API AllocConsoleWithOptions if it can be detected that console I/O is required.

Downlevel

On downlevel versions of Windows that do not understand (or expect) this manifest field, applications will allocate consoles as specified by their image subsystem (described in the abstract above).

Performance, Power, and Efficiency

This should have no impact on performance, power or efficiency.

Potential Issues

Shell Hang

I am not proposing a change in how shells determine whether to wait for an application before returning to a prompt. This means that a console subsystem application that intends to primarily present a UI but occasionally print text to a console (therefore choosing the detached allocation policy) will cause the shell to "hang" and wait for it to exit.

The decision to pause/wait is made entirely in the calling shell, and the console subsystem cannot influence that decision.

Because the vast majority of shells on Windows "hang" by calling WaitFor...Object with a HANDLE to the spawned process, an application that wants to be a "hybrid" CUI/GUI application will be forced to spawn a separate process to detach from the shell and then terminate its main process.

This is very similar to the forking model seen in many POSIX-compliant operating systems.

Launching interactively from Explorer, Task Scheduler, etc.

Applications like PowerShell may wish to retain automatic console allocation, and detached would be unsuitable for them. If PowerShell specifies the detached console allocation policy, launching pwsh.exe from File Explorer it will no longer spawn a console. This would almost certainly break PowerShell for all users.

Such applications can use AllocConsole() early in their startup.

At the same time, PowerShell wants -WindowStyle Hidden to suppress the console before it's created.

Applications in this category can use AllocConsoleWithOptions() to specify additional information about the new console window.

PowerShell, and any other shell that wishes to maintain interactive launch from the graphical shell, can start in detached mode and then allocate a console as necessary. Therefore:

  • PowerShell will set <consoleAllocationPolicy>detached</consoleAllocationPolicy>
  • On startup, it will process its commandline arguments.
  • If -WindowStyle Hidden is not present (the default case), it can:
    • AllocConsole() or AllocConsoleWithOptions(NULL)
    • Either of these APIs will present a console window (or not) based on the flags passed through STARTUPINFO during CreateProcess.
  • If -WindowStyle Hidden is present, it can:
    • AllocConsoleWithOptions(&alloc) where alloc.mode specifies ALLOC_CONSOLE_MODE_HIDDEN

Future considerations

We're introducing a new manifest field today -- what if we want to introduce more? Should we have a consoleSettings manifest block?

Are there other allocation policies we need to consider?

Resources

Rejected Solutions

  • A new PE subsystem, IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_HYBRID

    • it would behave like inheritOnly
    • relies on shells to update and check for this
    • checking a subsystem doesn't work right with app execution aliases3
      • This is not a new problem, but it digs the hole a little deeper.
    • requires standardization outside of Microsoft because the PE format is a dependency of the UEFI specification4
    • requires coordination between tooling teams both within and without Microsoft (regarding any tool that operates on or produces PE files)

  • An exported symbol that shells can check for to determine whether to wait for the attached process to exit

    • relies on shells to update and check for this
    • cracking an executable to look for symbols is probably the last thing shells want to do
      • we could provide an API to determine whether to wait or return?
    • fragile, somewhat silly, exporting symbols from EXEs is annoying and uncommon

An earlier version of this specification offered the always allocation policy, with the following behaviors:

STRUCK FROM SPECIFICATION

  • A GUI subsystem application would always get a console window.
  • A command-line shell would not wait for it to exit before returning a prompt.

It was cut because a GUI application that wants a console window can simply attach to an existing console session or allocate a new one. We found no compelling use case that would require the forced allocation of a console session outside of the application's code.

An earlier version of this specification offered the inheritOnly allocation policy, instead of the finer-grained hidden and detached policies. We deemed it insufficient for PowerShell's use case because any application launched by an inheritOnly PowerShell would immediately force the uncontrolled allocation of a console window.

STRUCK FROM SPECIFICATION

The move to hidden allows PowerShell to offer a fully-fledged console connection that can be itself inherited by a downstream application.

Additional allocation policies

An earlier revision of this specification suggested two allocation policies:

STRUCK FROM SPECIFICATION

hidden is intended to be used by console applications that want finer-grained control over the visibility of their console windows, but that still need a console host to service console APIs. This includes most scripting language interpreters.

detached is intended to be used by primarily graphical applications that would like to operate against a console if one is present but do not mind its absence. This includes any graphical tool with a --help or /? argument.

The hidden policy was rejected due to an incompatibility with modern console hosting, as hidden would require an application to interact with the console window via GetConsoleWindow() and explicitly show it.

STRUCK FROM SPECIFICATION

ShowWindow and ConPTY

The pseudoconsole creates a hidden window to service GetConsoleWindow(), and it can be trivially shown using ShowWindow. If we recommend that applications ShowWindow on startup, we will need to guard the pseudoconsole's pseudo-window from being shown.