A fork() in the road
microsoft.com
A fork() in the road
1–10 of 184 posts
Re: A fork() in the road
#2Okay, this one has me laughing out loud. Of COURSE Microsoft doesn't like fork()... Windows pretty much can't do it. I'll admit, there have been a lot of times I wish there was a more streamlined way to spawn processes on Linux (particularly daemons) but when I don't have fork() I always end up missing it. I'd take this paper a lot more seriously if it came from someone with a less obvious bias.
Re: A fork() in the road
#3Okay, this one has me laughing out loud. Of COURSE Microsoft doesn't like fork()... Windows pretty much can't do it. I'll admit, there have been a lot of times I wish there was a more streamlined way to spawn processes on Linux (particularly daemons) but when I don't have fork() I always end up missing it. I'd take this paper a lot more seriously if it came from someone with a less obvious bias.
Well, couldn't. Whatever they're doing with LXSS and picoprocesses seems to be good enough.
I don't run Windows so I'm far from the most biased person but frankly, on the surface the fork/exec thing really does seem unnecessary and weird in the modern world, where we've come up with better ways to do concurrency than just raw threads and processes anyways.
Re: A fork() in the road
#4Okay, this one has me laughing out loud. Of COURSE Microsoft doesn't like fork()... Windows pretty much can't do it. I'll admit, there have been a lot of times I wish there was a more streamlined way to spawn processes on Linux (particularly daemons) but when I don't have fork() I always end up missing it. I'd take this paper a lot more seriously if it came from someone with a less obvious bias.
ONE of the authors is from Microsoft. The other THREE are at Boston University and ETH.
Re: A fork() in the road
#5I havent read the entire thing yet, but reading from "replacing fork" to the end it reads too much like embrace extend extinguish.
Re: A fork() in the road
#6I havent read the entire thing yet, but reading from "replacing fork" to the end it reads too much like embrace extend extinguish.
It's suggesting posix_spawn, which is standardized and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
Re: A fork() in the road
#7Okay, this one has me laughing out loud. Of COURSE Microsoft doesn't like fork()... Windows pretty much can't do it. I'll admit, there have been a lot of times I wish there was a more streamlined way to spawn processes on Linux (particularly daemons) but when I don't have fork() I always end up missing it. I'd take this paper a lot more seriously if it came from someone with a less obvious bias.
The article pointed out legitimate drawbacks related to the intersection of fork() and other features like posix threads.
The paper mentions the benefit of posix_spawn for the fork+exec use case.
I might've seen posix_spawn while skimming a manpage or browsing a change log but this is the first time that I'd actually learned about its purpose.
The article's conclusion isn't "and therefore Linux is bad" btw.
Re: A fork() in the road
#8Fork has really weird semantics, and a lot of fun gotchas around managing resources. Good riddance?
Re: A fork() in the road
#9I havent read the entire thing yet, but reading from "replacing fork" to the end it reads too much like embrace extend extinguish.
It's suggesting posix_spawn, which is standardized and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
> Just as a programming course
would not today begin with goto, we suggest teaching either
posix_spawn() or CreateProcess(), and then introducing
fork as a special case with its historic context (§2).
Or CreateProcess(), which has a lot to do with microsoft.
Re: A fork() in the road
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's suggesting posix_spawn, which is standardized and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
> Just as a programming course would not today begin with goto, we suggest teaching either posix_spawn() or CreateProcess(), and then introducing fork as a special case with its historic context (§2). Or CreateProcess(), which has a lot to do with microsoft.
Yeah, if you're using Windows you aren't going to be able to use it. Or are you suggesting that Microsoft should implement posix_spawn?