A task in Retro Rocket is a background process. Unlike a normal program that runs in the foreground and owns the console, a task runs independently of the shell and continues until explicitly terminated.

Tasks can be used for long-running background services, or even as device drivers (for example, the ps2mouse task which implements the mouse driver entirely in BASIC).

Starting and stopping tasks

To run a program as a task:

ROCKETSH> task drivers/ps2mouse

This loads the program from /programs/drivers/ps2mouse and runs it in the background.

Tasks keep running until the system halts or they are killed with the shell’s process control commands.

What tasks are good for

Handling device drivers and daemon-type activity (mouse, timers, network servers).
Providing background services (logging, monitoring, caches).
Responding to requests from other programs (e.g. via UDP, shared state, or libraries).
Anything that needs to run "behind the scenes" while the user works in the shell or another program runs in the foreground.

What not to do in a task

Because tasks run without a console of their own:

Do not print to the console (PRINT, CLS, CURSOR, etc.). This will disrupt whatever foreground program is running.
Do not assume interactive input. Tasks should never call INKEY$, INPUT, or similar.
Avoid blocking calls that wait forever on user input. Tasks should loop, sleep, or use nonblocking calls appropriately.
Keep state contained. Do not overwrite global variables that other programs might depend on.
Be polite. Use background loops that do real work but do not starve the system by calling busy FNs (e.g. poll at a reasonable interval rather than spinning as fast as possible).

Structure of a typical task

A task is usually structured as:

Initialisation - set up UDP ports, device state, or memory structures.
Main loop - perform the background activity (poll hardware, read input, handle requests).
Clean shutdown - release resources when exiting (e.g. UDPUNBIND).

Example skeleton:

DEF PROCmain
REM initialisation
UDPBIND "127.0.0.1", 13802
 
REPEAT
REM background work
PROCpoll_device
PROChandle_requests
UNTIL FALSE
ENDPROC

Notes

Tasks share the same BASIC runtime as other programs, so they must be well-behaved and not interfere with the console.
Use libraries to expose a clean API to foreground programs (for example, the mouse library calls into the ps2mouse task).
Remember that tasks continue running after the shell returns - always consider resource cleanup (PROCdone) where applicable.