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author | 2015-05-19 16:00:56 -0400 | |
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committer | 2015-05-19 16:00:56 -0400 | |
commit | 27ab359d16e815e5476f6b0a723ed314673702fc (patch) | |
tree | f06d565b2988047d560ea50b9dd8788da860ebd2 | |
parent | 6edd8c86a4b57a9b844a35ba3206454c688d8e98 (diff) |
devblog
-rw-r--r-- | doc/devblog/day_286-287__rotten_locks.mdwn | 44 |
1 files changed, 44 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/devblog/day_286-287__rotten_locks.mdwn b/doc/devblog/day_286-287__rotten_locks.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7db07da57 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/devblog/day_286-287__rotten_locks.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +There's something rotten in POSIX fctnl locking. It's not composable, +or thread-safe. + +The most obvious problem with it is that if you have 2 threads, and they +both try to take an exclusive lock of the same file (each opening it +separately) ... They'll both succeed. Unlike 2 separate processes, +where only one can take the lock. + +Then the really crazy bit: If a process has a lock file open and fcntl +locked, and then the same process opens the lock file again, for any +reason, closing the new FD will release the lock that was set +using the other FD. + +So, that's a massive gotcha if you're writing complex multithreaded code. +Or generally for composition of code. Of course, C programmers deal with +this kind of thing all the time, but in the clean world of Haskell, this is +a glaring problem. We don't expect to need to worry about this kind of +unrelated side effect that breaks composition and thread safety. + +After noticing this problem affected git-anenx in at least one place, +I have to assume there could be more. And I don't want to need to worry +about this problem forever. So, I have been working today on a clean fix +that I can cleanly switch all my lock-related code to use. + +One reasonable approach would be to avoid fcntl locking, and use flock. +But, flock works even less well on NFS than fcntl, and git-annex relies on +some fcntl locking features. On Linux, there's an "open file description +locks" feature that fixes POSIX fnctl locking to not have this horrible +wart, but that's not portable. + +Instead, my approach is to keep track of which files the process has +locked. If it tries to do something with a lockfile that it already has +locked, it avoids opening the same file again, instead implements its own +in-process locking behavior. I use STM to do that in a thread-safe manner. + +I should probably break out git-annex's lock file handling code as a +library. Eventually.. This was about as much fun as a root canal, and I'm +having a real one tomorrow. :-/ + +---- + +git-annex is now included in [Stackage](http://www.stackage.org/)! + +Daniel Kahn Gillmor is doing some work on reproducible builds of git-annex. |