Re: [PATCH v3 1/2] add interface for /dev/tty interaction

> Erik has looked into doing a Windows alternative in compat/terminal.c,
> and I think an integer would be insufficient there. In particular, I
> think Windows needs two descriptors to accomplish the same thing (one
> for CONIN$ and one for CONOUT$).  So you'd need to turn term_t into a
> struct (and you'd probably not want to return it by value then).
>
> Maybe it would be better to keep the abstraction as non-leaky as
> possible, and just provide "terminal_can_prompt()" or similar?

> Returning the open descriptor (as Tay's patch does) avoids a race
> condition where /dev/tty can be opened when terminal_can_prompt runs,
> but not when we try to actually read from it. But we can either:
>
>   1. Not care. Even if the tty is opened, if a user has closed the
>      terminal we are going to get a read error anyway. So you can never
>      avoid that race condition in some form.
>
>   2. Open the terminal descriptor when either function is called, and
>      never close it. I don't think there is any reason we can't just
>      leak the descriptor.
>
> -Peff