Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/3] sha1_file: open window into packfiles with O_CLOEXEC

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 19:37:35 -0700

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> Linus Torvalds <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 4:36 PM, Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Would the best endgame shape for this function be to open with
>>> O_NOATIME (and retry without), and then add CLOEXEC with fcntl(2)
>>> but ignoring an error from it, I guess?  That would be the closest
>>> to what we historically had, I would think.
>>
>> I think that's the best model.
>
> OK, so perhaps like this.

Hmph.  This may not fly well in practice, though.  

To Unix folks, CLOEXEC is not a huge correctness issue.  A child
process may hold onto an open file descriptor a bit longer than the
lifetime of the parent but as long as the child eventually exits,
nothing is affected.  Over there, things are different.  The parent
cannot even rename(2) or unlink(2) a file it created and closed
while the child is still holding the file descriptor open and the
lack of CLOEXEC will make the parent fail.  I do not know how well
fcntl(2) emulation works on Windows, but I would not be surprised
if J6t or Dscho comes back and says that FD_CLOEXEC given to F_SETFD
would not work while O_CLOEXEC given to open(2) does.