On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 3:39 AM, Szabolcs Nagy <n...@port70.net> wrote: > > i think the sticky signal design would work, but more > complex than what we have and adds some atomic rmw ops > into common code paths and not backward compatible. > > not using vsyscalls for cancellation-points sounds easier.
Hmm. Ok, so I think I understand your needs, and your current model does sound easier. But the cost of not using vsyscalls is really quite high. It sounds like the main worry is that some system calls are guaranteed cancellation points, and if the signal slips in between your cancellation point check and the system call, you lose that ability. I'm assuming that if the "canceltype" is asynchronous, you never have this problem, because the cancellation can be done in the signal handler itself, which avoids the whole race. Am I getting closer to understanding the particular semantics you are looking for? Because if that's the case, I wonder if what you really want is not "sticky signals" as much as "synchronous signals" - ie the ability to say that a signal shouldn't ever interrupt in random places, but only at well-defined points (where a system call would be one such point - are there others?) So then you could make "pthread_setcanceltype()" just set that flag for the cancellation signal, and just know that the signal itself will always be deferred to such a synchronous point (ie system call entry). We already have the ability to catch things at system call entry (ptrace needs it, for example), so we could possibly make our signal delivery have a mode where a signal does *not* cause user space execution to be interrupted by a signal handler, but instead just sets a bit in the thread info state that then causes the next system call to take the signal. Linus