From: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@janestreet.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, 63865@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#63865: 29.0.90; call-process while owning the X selection hangs other processes
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2023 10:12:41 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ierbkhwab3a.fsf@janestreet.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <83leh08xmn.fsf@gnu.org> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Sat, 03 Jun 2023 16:48:48 +0300")
Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> From: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@janestreet.com>
>> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, 63865@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2023 09:10:02 -0400
>>
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> >> If I'm implementing some package and I decide to use call-process for
>> >> some long operation, then some user uses my package and it runs
>> >> call-process, and they get bored while waiting and switch away from
>> >> Emacs, they'll experience a hang in some other application. That hang
>> >> seems clearly undesirable!
>> >
>> > Then don't design the package such that call-process blocks Emacs for
>> > prolonged periods of time. Because this will annoy the users of Emacs
>> > even before it will be seen by other applications that request X
>> > selections.
>>
>> Forget other packages: Emacs itself uses call-process in tons of places
>> where it will run for prolonged periods of time!
>
> Really? "tons of places where it will run for prolonged periods of
> time"? what is "prolonged period of time" for this purpose? Aren't
> you a tad exaggerating?
"prolonged period of time" is anything over a second.
I see tons of calls to call-process with potentially long-running
programs. "find", "gcc", "grep", "awk"... and depending on the user's
system, *any* subprocess call can potentially run for a long time.
But again, the point isn't just that they can potentially run for a long
time. It's that *the user's whole system can be unusable* while they
run. We are not just blocking Emacs, we are (sometimes) blocking
*everything*.
>> Should we port all these instances away from using call-process to avoid
>> this behavior?
>
> There's no general answer to that, we should examine each case
> separately.
A general answer could be fixing call-process to not hang other
processes.
>> > call-process has its use cases, which are important, and we will not
>> > deprecate it.
>> >
>> > You can easily emulate call-process with start-process if you need to
>> > do so, so Emacs gives you both possibilities (and expects you to use
>> > whatever is right in each case).
>>
>> What use case does call-process have on Unix, which an emulation in
>> terms of start-process would not also satisfy?
>
> When the process returns quickly. call-process is significantly
> simpler to use than start-process+wait, so doing that when unnecessary
> is a complication we shouldn't take.
What I mean was an emulation like this:
(defun my-call-process (program &optional destination &rest args)
(let ((process (make-process :name "call-process"
:buffer destination
:command (cons program args))))
(while (accept-process-output process))))
my-call-process is missing a few arguments that the real call-process
has. But if this is all I use, is there *any* reason to *not* use
my-call-process on Linux?
There is at least one strong reason to use it: It won't hang other
processes.
> Anyway, this kind of discussion doesn't belong in a bug report about X
> selections.
But the entire point of this discussion, for me, is to fix the
X-selection-related hangs which Emacs currently causes when in
call-process. i.e., this bug report.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-06-03 14:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-06-03 1:55 bug#63865: 29.0.90; call-process while owning the X selection hangs other processes Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 6:02 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 7:11 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-03 9:12 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 9:31 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-03 11:10 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 11:16 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 12:07 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-03 12:30 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 12:55 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 13:10 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 13:48 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 14:12 ` Spencer Baugh [this message]
2023-06-03 14:24 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 14:41 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 15:02 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-03 15:34 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 15:50 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-04 0:18 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-03 16:21 ` Andreas Schwab
2023-06-03 17:03 ` Spencer Baugh
2023-06-03 17:07 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-06-04 0:15 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-04 0:13 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-04 0:12 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-23 14:26 ` Spencer Baugh
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