Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:38:04 +0300 (EEST) From: jau@iki.fi (Jukka A. Ukkonen) To: freebsd-standards@freebsd.org Subject: A very simple patch stagnated in the PR database Message-ID: <200808250838.m7P8c5Q9002546@jau.iki.fi>
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Greetings from Finland, Are there any committers willing to handle the following PR and patch? The issue is very straight forward, but still it has been left in open state in the PR database for more than a year now. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=standards/116221 This was classified in a bit ad hoc manner as a standards issue, because there is no "compatibility" category to put it in, and kern and standards happen to be the best matches to choose from. I guess I selected standards only because WNOWAIT is a SUS issue anyhow. This is very much a "low hanging fruit" type of an issue. This PR and patch add the flag WNOWAIT to the wait*() system calls. The idea of the flag is to allow independent library modules and threads to avoid collecting the exit status from child processes they did not fork themselves. Instead of doing plain... pid = wait4 (-1, &status, 0, &res); it will become possible to do... pid = wait4 (-1, &status, WNOWAIT, &res); and only if pid is known to the calling module continue ... pid = wait4 (pid, &status, 0, &res); reaping only the exit status of a known child. E.g. SunOS/Solaris already has the WNOWAIT flag. I have had my own kernel sources updated from the latest RELENG / STABLE branch automatically on daily basis for several years and my own patches automatically rolled on top of that. The WNOWAIT patch has been one of those automatic patches and a steady part of my system for at least 18 months now with no ill effects what so ever. I assume there is now someone thinking "Right, the waitid() call is also a SUS issue. Why not tackle them both at the same time?" I was originally planning to do both waitid() and WNOWAIT, but there was something related to filling the siginfo struct for waitid() which was not quite obvious when I added WNOWAIT. So, I left waitid() out waiting for a moment of inspiration but added the new flag because the latter was useful on its own. It is sad to see these low hanging fruit being forgotten and left lingering around in the PR database for all ages while simply merging them and extending the functionality for the benefit of the whole community would take almost no time at all. An outright decline would be better than just leaving simple patches hanging on the rope. So, it would be nice to find someone willing to inspect the PR and get it closed one way or the other. Cheers, // jau .--- ..- -.- -.- .- .- .-.-.- ..- -.- -.- --- -. . -. / Jukka A. Ukkonen, Oxit Ltd, Finland /__ M.Sc. (sw-eng & cs) (Phone) +358-500-606-671 / Internet: Jukka.Ukkonen(a)Oxit.Fi (Home) +358-9-6215-280 / Internet: jau(a)iki.fi v .--- .- ..- ...-.- .. -.- .. .-.-.- ..-. .. + + + + My opinions are mine and mine alone, not my employers. + + + +
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