threads / patch / 18961

patch, 2 partsWindows: Work around intermittent failures in mingw_rename

Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Windows: Work around intermittent failures in mingw_rename

## tl;dr

2 messages between Apr 20, 2009 and Apr 20, 2009. Diffs are folded; open one to read it.

replies: 1people: 2as markdown or json

Johannes Sixt· Apr 20, 2009, 08:01 UTC · lore
From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 08:49:59 +0200

We have replaced rename() with a version that can rename a file to a destination that already exists. Nevertheless, many users, the author included, observe failures in the code that are not reproducible.

The theory is that the failures are due to some other process that happens to have opened the destination file briefly at the wrong moment. (And there is no way on Windows to delete or replace a file that is currently open.) The most likely candidate for such a process is a virus scanner. The failure is more often observed while there is heavy git activity (for example while the test suite is running or during a rebase operation).

We work around the failure by retrying the rename operation if it failed due to ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED. The retries are delayed a bit: The first only by giving up the time slice, the next after the minimal scheduling granularity, and if more retries are needed, then we wait some non-trivial amount of time with exponential back-off.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
---
 Steffen, Dscho,
 this is slightly different from the version that is currently 4msysgit:
 I removed the warning that was printed when a retry was attempted.
 -- Hannes
 compat/mingw.c |   21 +++++++++++++++++++--
 1 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Show changes to compat/mingw.c +19 −2
diff --git a/compat/mingw.c b/compat/mingw.c
index 4b37d93..74eae20 100644
--- a/compat/mingw.c
+++ b/compat/mingw.c
@@ -978,7 +978,9 @@ int mingw_connect(int sockfd, struct sockaddr *sa, size_t sz)
 #undef rename
 int mingw_rename(const char *pold, const char *pnew)
 {
-	DWORD attrs;
+	DWORD attrs, gle;
+	int tries = 0;
+	static const int delay[] = { 0, 1, 10, 20, 40 };

 	/*
 	 * Try native rename() first to get errno right.
@@ -988,10 +990,12 @@ int mingw_rename(const char *pold, const char *pnew)
 		return 0;
 	if (errno != EEXIST)
 		return -1;
+repeat:
 	if (MoveFileEx(pold, pnew, MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING))
 		return 0;
 	/* TODO: translate more errors */
-	if (GetLastError() == ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED &&
+	gle = GetLastError();
+	if (gle == ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED &&
 	    (attrs = GetFileAttributes(pnew)) != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES) {
 		if (attrs & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) {
 			errno = EISDIR;
@@ -1001,10 +1005,23 @@ int mingw_rename(const char *pold, const char *pnew)
 		    SetFileAttributes(pnew, attrs & ~FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)) {
 			if (MoveFileEx(pold, pnew, MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING))
 				return 0;
+			gle = GetLastError();
 			/* revert file attributes on failure */
 			SetFileAttributes(pnew, attrs);
 		}
 	}
+	if (tries < ARRAY_SIZE(delay) && gle == ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED) {
+		/*
+		 * We assume that some other process had the source or
+		 * destination file open at the wrong moment and retry.
+		 * In order to give the other process a higher chance to
+		 * complete its operation, we give up our time slice now.
+		 * If we have to retry again, we do sleep a bit.
+		 */
+		Sleep(delay[tries]);
+		tries++;
+		goto repeat;
+	}
 	errno = EACCES;
 	return -1;
 }
-- 
1.6.3.rc1.989.ga175e.dirty
Johannes Schindelin· Apr 20, 2009, 10:01 UTC · re: Johannes Sixt · lore

Re: [PATCH 1/2] Windows: Work around intermittent failures in mingw_rename

Hi,
On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>  this is slightly different from the version that is currently 4msysgit: 
>  I removed the warning that was printed when a retry was attempted.
Makes sense.

Ciao, Dscho

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