Re: Slow shell script execution on Cygwin

[Brian Dessent]

Tor Lillqvist wrote:

> Hmm, but I guess the fork/exec separation makes this harder, Cygwin
> can't know when it is emulating fork() whether the child process will
> immediately exec() one of the above. Or does the Cygwin shell(s)
> already have some special code instead of plain fork()/exec()?

I believe that Cygwin's ash used to be compiled to use vfork(), which
apparently is faster by some degree under Cygwin.  (I don't know the
details here.)  However as of the last[*] ash release on 2004-01-27 this
has been changed so that it's back to standard fork/exec.  It seems
clear that Cygwin would benefit from some kind of special casing in the
shell because of the fork penalty, but apparently no one has the time or
is capable of providing this, if it's even feasible.

[*] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=cygwin&m=107520010817415&w=2

Brian