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Message-ID: <51BB56CB.7030209@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:45:47 -0700
From: Paul Eggert <eggert AT cs DOT ucla DOT edu>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
CC: 14569 AT debbugs DOT gnu DOT org
Subject: Re: bug#14569: 24.3.50; bootstrap fails on Cygwin
References: <b4m61xqu654 DOT fsf AT jpl DOT org> <51B5DA82 DOT 4010703 AT alice DOT it> <3EC77598-24B8-42DD-8983-5069E64AAB60 AT swipnet DOT se> <51B62175 DOT 10307 AT alice DOT it> <06F80BBC-D7CD-4E6C-97AD-EB8E476E2FC0 AT swipnet DOT se> <83sj0olh38 DOT fsf AT gnu DOT org> <51B7717D DOT 6060702 AT cs DOT ucla DOT edu> <51B77A00 DOT 2060908 AT cornell DOT edu> <83mwqwl903 DOT fsf AT gnu DOT org> <51B78346 DOT 3050600 AT cornell DOT edu> <FA9D25B7-3D1F-40CC-AA6E-5347E8112CA4 AT swipnet DOT se> <E143AC75-8C2B-4A59-81F6-571B9D4EEF13 AT swipnet DOT se> <2E06A322-530C-4AA2-9282-6D2E48B1D194 AT swipnet DOT se> <51B8BEFE DOT 6070309 AT cs DOT ucla DOT edu> <51B8D5ED DOT 1010407 AT alice DOT it> <C679A2B2-0264-4DDA-B900-5B90BE7CF1E9 AT swipnet DOT se> <51BA03CA DOT 4080804 AT cs DOT ucla DOT edu> <BEC82502-E9FD-4F8E-B91E-F680F6885FB2 AT swipnet DOT se>
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Cygwin developers, I'm worried about a Cygwin bug where
pthread_kill may not send a signal to the correct thread.
This bug may be causing Emacs to crash.  The Cygwin bug is
discussed in this thread:

http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-05/msg00472.html

Emacs uses pthread_kill to redirect
SIGCHLD to the main thread; if this is sent to a random
thread instead, that could explain the random crashes.

My question is: does this bug still exist with Cygwin,
and if so is it likely to get fixed soon?

More details about the Emacs bug can be found here:

  http://bugs.gnu.org/14569

Briefly, Emacs is crashing randomly on Cygwin ever since it started
doing this:

  /* Tickle glib's child-handling code.  Ask glib to wait for Emacs itself;
     this should always fail, but is enough to initialize glib's            
     private SIGCHLD handler.  */
  g_source_unref (g_child_watch_source_new (getpid ()));

After this newly-inserted code, Emacs finds out what the
child signal handler was:

  /* Now, find out what glib's signal handler was, and store it
     into lib_child_handler.  */
  struct sigaction action, old_action;
  emacs_sigaction_init (&action, deliver_child_signal);
  sigaction (SIGCHLD, &action, &old_action);
  eassert (! (old_action.sa_flags & SA_SIGINFO));
  if (old_action.sa_handler != SIG_DFL && old_action.sa_handler != SIG_IGN
      && old_action.sa_handler != deliver_child_signal)
    lib_child_handler = old_action.sa_handler;

Emacs's SIGCHILD handler, deliver_child_signal, arranges the
signal handling to occur in the main thread (to avoid races
within Emacs), like this:

  int old_errno = errno;
  bool on_main_thread = true;
  if (! pthread_equal (pthread_self (), main_thread))
    {
      sigset_t blocked;
      sigemptyset (&blocked);
      sigaddset (&blocked, sig);
      pthread_sigmask (SIG_BLOCK, &blocked, 0);
      pthread_kill (main_thread, sig);
      on_main_thread = false;
    }
  if (on_main_thread)
    handle_child_signal (sig);
  errno = old_errno;

And handle_child_signal, which runs in the main thread, does
a bunch of Emacsish things and then invokes lib_child_handler (sig),
which is glib's SIGCHLD handler.

All this works just fine on Fedora and other platforms; but it
doesn't work on Cygwin.

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