From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:53:19 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/4] start_command: detect execvp failures early
Message-ID: <201001142253.19595.j6t@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <7viqb49xwb.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Donnerstag, 14. Januar 2010, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org> writes:
> > Previously, failures during execvp could be detected only by
> > finish_command. However, in some situations it is beneficial for the
> > parent process to know earlier that the child process will not run.
> >
> > The idea to use a pipe to signal failures to the parent process and
> > the test case were lifted from patches by Ilari Liusvaara.
>
> I wonder if we can do this without pipe, perhaps using "vfork, exec, then
> update a variable"....

Except that some systems implement vfork(2) in terms of fork(2), I heard. 
Moreover, I think that we do way too many things before the exec; isn't that 
dangerous?

-- Hannes