Re: RFC: import of posix_spawn GSoC results

[bill o gallmeister <bgallmeister%gmail.com@localhost>]

From the annals of the POSIX wars:  the rationale for posix_spawn() was to support systems without 
MMUs, where fork() is expensive, and vfork() impossible.  The idea was to allow MMUless systems a 
decent means of starting other processes, without requiring the full generality of fork().  It's 
really not a terribly useful facility when one has, and is used to, fork/exec.

On 12/19/2011 07:04 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 02:43:08AM +0000, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> > You realize that currently vfork() does not suspend all the threads
> > in a threaded program, making it difficult to use...
>
> I didn't.  That's kind of nifty, but I agree it's not exactly easy to
> put to constructive use.
>
> So the point of this is to avoid fork() in threaded programs, then?
> That's not the rationale I remember seeing in the past -- I thought it
> was supposed to improve performance in the general case.
>
> Thor


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Bill O. Gallmeister
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http://geekwhisperer.blogspot.com