On 07-Apr-98 Greg A. Woods wrote:

> Strictly speaking the "new" vfork() is merely implementing the semantics
> that have *always* been documented for it.
>
> Any user programs that "broke" with its proper implmentation were in
> fact already broken long before since they voilated the specification
> and probably should not have been using vfork() in the first place.

I certainly agree with that, so....

> That they were "fixed" is indeed a terribly *minor* event in the change
> history of the OS as a whole (i.e. "CHANGES" ;-).

...I guess you've got a point there.

> I remember doing exactly the opposite and tracing through the 0.9 and
> 1.0 sources to find out why vfork() wasn't doing as it was documented to
> do (and as I'd always observed it to do on 4.3BSD and even SunOS-4)!  ;-)

This is something I'm scratching my head about now.

The CSRG 4.4BSD book has murky grumbling about programs exploiting the vfork()
shared vmspace showing "bad programming practice", or some such.  That's the
only clue I've seen.


--Jim Howard  <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>


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E-Mail: jiho@mail.c-zone.net
Date: 06-Apr-98
Time: 19:19:02

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