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[PATCH 1/4] write_or_die: handle EPIPE in async threads

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Feb 24, 2016, 07:40 UTC
Message-ID
<20160224074016.GA9481@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<20160224073603.GA9163@sigill.intra.peff.net>

When write_or_die() sees EPIPE, it treats it specially by converting it into a SIGPIPE death. We obviously cannot ignore it, as the write has failed and the caller expects us to die. But likewise, we cannot just call die(), because printing any message at all would be a nuisance during normal operations.

However, this is a problem if write_or_die() is called from a thread. Our raised signal ends up killing the whole process, when logically we just need to kill the thread (after all, if we are ignoring SIGPIPE, there is good reason to think that the main thread is expecting to handle it).

Inside an async thread, the die() code already does the right thing, because we use our custom die_async() routine, which calls pthread_join(). So ideally we would piggy-back on that, and simply call:

  die_quietly_with_code(141);

or similar. But refactoring the die code to do this is surprisingly non-trivial. The die_routines themselves handle both printing and the decision of the exit code. Every one of them would have to be modified to take new parameters for the code, and to tell us to be quiet.

Instead, we can just teach write_or_die() to check for the async case and handle it specially. We do have to build an interface to abstract the async exit, but it's simple and self-contained. If we had many call-sites that wanted to do this die_quietly_with_code(), this approach wouldn't scale as well, but we don't. This is the only place where do this weird exit trick.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
This is needed for patch 2, wherein we (surprise!) call write_or_die()
in a thread and want to ignore SIGPIPE.

Obviously another solution is "don't call write_or_die() in a thread", and that would work for patch 2 here. But it can be hard to know whether or not write_or_die() is called deep in the call stack. So even though this solution is slightly more complex, I like that it behaves correctly in all cases.

 run-command.c  | 10 ++++++++++
 run-command.h  |  1 +
 write_or_die.c |  4 ++++
 3 files changed, 15 insertions(+)
diff --git a/run-command.c b/run-command.c
index cdf0184..426387b 100644
--- a/run-command.c
+++ b/run-command.c
@@ -635,6 +635,11 @@ int in_async(void)
 	return !pthread_equal(main_thread, pthread_self());
 }
 
+void async_exit(int code)
+{
+	pthread_exit((void *)(intptr_t)code);
+}
+
 #else
 
 static struct {
@@ -680,6 +685,11 @@ int in_async(void)
 	return process_is_async;
 }
 
+int async_exit(int code)
+{
+	exit(code);
+}
+
 #endif
 
 int start_async(struct async *async)
diff --git a/run-command.h b/run-command.h
index d5a57f9..42917e8 100644
--- a/run-command.h
+++ b/run-command.h
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ struct async {
 int start_async(struct async *async);
 int finish_async(struct async *async);
 int in_async(void);
+void NORETURN async_exit(int code);
 
 /**
  * This callback should initialize the child process and preload the
diff --git a/write_or_die.c b/write_or_die.c
index e7afe7a..49e80aa 100644
--- a/write_or_die.c
+++ b/write_or_die.c
@@ -1,8 +1,12 @@
 #include "cache.h"
+#include "run-command.h"
 
 static void check_pipe(int err)
 {
 	if (err == EPIPE) {
+		if (in_async())
+			async_exit(141);
+
 		signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_DFL);
 		raise(SIGPIPE);
 		/* Should never happen, but just in case... */
-- 
2.7.2.645.g4e1306c
Previous: Jeff KingNext: Jeff King
Message 2 of 5 in “robustifying t5504”
  1. 0/4 robustifying t5504Jeff King, Feb 24, 2016
  2. 1/4 write_or_die: handle EPIPE in async threadsJeff King, Feb 24, 2016
  3. 2/4 fetch-pack: ignore SIGPIPE in sideband demuxerJeff King, Feb 24, 2016
  4. 3/4 test_must_fail: report number of unexpected signalJeff King, Feb 24, 2016
  5. 4/4 t5504: handle expected output from SIGPIPE deathJeff King, Feb 24, 2016

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