Re: [PATCH] Use line buffering for standard output

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Aug 3, 2008, 21:46 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808031444270.3668@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <1217798768-18021-1-git-send-email-mail@cup.kalibalik.dk>

On Sun, 3 Aug 2008, Anders Melchiorsen wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>
> Normally, stdout is fully buffered, unless it refers to a terminal
> device. This gives problems when fork() is in play: the buffer is
> cloned and output appears twice.
> 
> By always setting stdout to line buffering, we make the output work
> identically for all output devices.

Please don't.

This is a huge peformance issue for things like

	git log -p > file

where we really want it to be fully buffered.

So please just find the place where we do a fork() without flushing pending output...

(We really shouldn't have all that many "fork()" calls left, I thought - the Windows stuff means that most of it should be abstracted away. So it's not like we're talking about hundreds of sites, there should be just a couple).

		Linus