Re: [PATCH] diff: fix textconv error zombies

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 30, 2010, 22:56 UTC
Message-ID: <20100330225628.GB608@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <201003310017.24979.j6t@kdbg.org>

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:17:24AM +0200, Johannes Sixt wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> This could deadlock in the theoretical case that the read() in the parent 
> returns an error even though the child is still writing data; the child would 
> hang while waiting for the pipe being drained by the parent; but the parent 
> would wait for the child to exit, which never happens. Doing the close() 
> before finish_command() avoids this situation because the child dies of 
> SIGPIPE.

Yeah, I actually thought about that while writing the error case for strbuf_read (I do close(child.out) before finish_command). But I didn't consider it in the success case. I don't think it matters here because we will already have gotten EOF from child.out, which should mean the child is no longer writing and will not block.

So I am not sure there is any deadlock, but I am fine with your version of the patch.

-Peff