Re: [PATCH] Replacement for the sigs_to_ignore hack in timeout.c

[Paul Eggert]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> writes:

> I just checked POSIX, and this is entirely true - the exec*() family is
> allowed to inherit an ignored SIGCHLD, in deference to older systems like
> SysV; and wait()/waitpid() are allowed to fail with ECHILD if SIGCHLD is
> ignored.  But most systems these days explicitly set SIGCHLD to SIG_DFL on
> fork; are there still any modern systems where the explicit signal change
> is needed?

I'd be a bit leery of assuming this.  It was such a pervasive problem
back in the day.  I'd be a bit surprised if the problem were eliminated
from all modern systems in all compilation modes.

> But in looking at the gnulib code for execute.c, I don't see any mention
> of this SIGCHLD anomaly, where wait/waitpid fail if SIGCHLD is ignored.
> On the other hand, gnulib's execute module uses waitid rather than
> waitpid; I guess that this choice of API is immune to the SysV behavior?

Yes, I expect so.

The simplest thing is to leave install.c alone.  Porting to mingw is low
priority, surely.