[Gc] [PATCH] define HANDLE_FORK on unix platforms with pthreads

[Andy Wingo]

Thanks for the comments, Hans!

On Tue 21 Feb 2012 00:16, "Boehm, Hans" <hans.boehm at hp.com> writes:

> I believe the reason this was not enabled by default is that Posix
> doesn't allow calling memory allocation functions such as malloc()
> between fork and exec either.  Thus AFAIK, this is a workaround for a
> problem not introduced by the garbage collector.

Can you cite this?  I am having a hard time finding this one.

There is the issue of fork from signal handlers, as well, but that is a
separate issue:

  http://standards.ieee.org/findstds/interps/1003-1c-95_int/pasc-1003.1c-37.html

> It may still be a good idea to turn it on.  I don't know whether glibc
> and malloc implementations normally try to handle this case correctly
> for standard malloc.

It seems that glibc does install atfork handlers for a number of
things.  See for example:

  http://repo.or.cz/w/glibc.git/blob?f=malloc/arena.c#l218

Also see other uses of "thread_atfork" internal to glibc.

Regards,

Andy
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