Background application that start another background application

Question

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 running windows 10 IOT core with a backgroundapplication1(BGA1) running on it.

Can i start another backgroundapplication2(BGA2) from BGA1 ? and terminate BGA2 from BGA1 ?

Answer 1

No, you cannot. Background Applications:

launch at machine startup and run continuously without any process lifetime management resource use limitations

So all background applications are started when the machine starts. And they control their own lifetime (by choosing to exit), but nobody else can directly shut it down.

Answer 2

Maybe Windows IoT Core Device Portal REST API is helpful.

The following is a simple code sample that starts a background application from another background application:

namespace BackgroundApplicationStarter
{
    public sealed class StartupTask : IBackgroundTask
    {
        public void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
        {
            var deferral = taskInstance.GetDeferral();     

            StartApp();
        }

        private async void StartApp()
        {
            string fullPackageNameEncoded = System.Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("BackgroundApplication1234-uwp_1.0.0.0_arm__a48w6404kk2ea"));

            Uri endpoint = new Uri("http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/iot/appx/app?appid=" + fullPackageNameEncoded);

            var client = new System.Net.Http.HttpClient();
            var byteArray = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("[insert your user name]:[insert your user password]");
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new System.Net.Http.Headers.AuthenticationHeaderValue("basic", Convert.ToBase64String(byteArray));

            HttpContent content = new StringContent("", Encoding.UTF8);
            System.Net.Http.HttpResponseMessage response = await client.PostAsync(endpoint, content);
            HttpContent responseContent = response.Content;

            Debug.WriteLine("Response StatusCode: " + (int)response.StatusCode);
        }
    }
}

You can get the full package name either from Device Portal or Visual Studio when complete the deploy.