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The previous commit taught the tempfile code to give up
ownership over tempfiles that have been renamed or deleted.
That makes it possible to use a stack variable like this:
struct tempfile t;
create_tempfile(&t, ...);
...
if (!err)
rename_tempfile(&t, ...);
else
delete_tempfile(&t);
But doing it this way has a high potential for creating
memory errors. The tempfile we pass to create_tempfile()
ends up on a global linked list, and it's not safe for it to
go out of scope until we've called one of those two
deactivation functions.
Imagine that we add an early return from the function that
forgets to call delete_tempfile(). With a static or heap
tempfile variable, the worst case is that the tempfile hangs
around until the program exits (and some functions like
setup_shallow_temporary rely on this intentionally, creating
a tempfile and then leaving it for later cleanup).
But with a stack variable as above, this is a serious memory
error: the variable goes out of scope and may be filled with
garbage by the time the tempfile code looks at it. Let's
see if we can make it harder to get this wrong.
Since many callers need to allocate arbitrary numbers of
tempfiles, we can't rely on static storage as a general
solution. So we need to turn to the heap. We could just ask
all callers to pass us a heap variable, but that puts the
burden on them to call free() at the right time.
Instead, let's have the tempfile code handle the heap
allocation _and_ the deallocation (when the tempfile is
deactivated and removed from the list).
This changes the return value of all of the creation
functions. For the cleanup functions (delete and rename),
we'll add one extra bit of safety: instead of taking a
tempfile pointer, we'll take a pointer-to-pointer and set it
to NULL after freeing the object. This makes it safe to
double-call functions like delete_tempfile(), as the second
call treats the NULL input as a noop. Several callsites
follow this pattern.
The resulting patch does have a fair bit of noise, as each
caller needs to be converted to handle:
1. Storing a pointer instead of the struct itself.
2. Passing the pointer instead of taking the struct
address.
3. Handling a "struct tempfile *" return instead of a file
descriptor.
We could play games to make this less noisy. For example, by
defining the tempfile like this:
struct tempfile {
struct heap_allocated_part_of_tempfile {
int fd;
...etc
} *actual_data;
}
Callers would continue to have a "struct tempfile", and it
would be "active" only when the inner pointer was non-NULL.
But that just makes things more awkward in the long run.
There aren't that many callers, so we can simply bite
the bullet and adjust all of them. And the compiler makes it
easy for us to find them all.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Once a "struct tempfile" is added to the global cleanup
list, it is never removed. This means that its storage must
remain valid for the lifetime of the program. For single-use
tempfiles and locks, this isn't a big deal: we just declare
the struct static. But for library code which may take
multiple simultaneous locks (like the ref code), they're
forced to allocate a struct on the heap and leak it.
This is mostly OK in practice. The size of the leak is
bounded by the number of refs, and most programs exit after
operating on a fixed number of refs (and allocate
simultaneous memory proportional to the number of ref
updates in the first place). But:
1. It isn't hard to imagine a real leak: a program which
runs for a long time taking a series of ref update
instructions and fulfilling them one by one. I don't
think we have such a program now, but it's certainly
plausible.
2. The leaked entries appear as false positives to
tools like valgrind.
Let's relax this rule by keeping only "active" tempfiles on
the list. We can do this easily by moving the list-add
operation from prepare_tempfile_object to activate_tempfile,
and adding a deletion in deactivate_tempfile.
Existing callers do not need to be updated immediately.
They'll continue to leak any tempfile objects they may have
allocated, but that's no different than the status quo. We
can clean them up individually.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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The tempfile API keeps to-be-cleaned tempfiles in a
singly-linked list and never removes items from the list. A
future patch would like to start removing items, but removal
from a singly linked list is O(n), as we have to walk the
list to find the predecessor element. This means that a
process which takes "n" simultaneous lockfiles (for example,
an atomic transaction on "n" refs) may end up quadratic in
"n".
Before we start allowing items to be removed, it would be
nice to have a way to cover this case in linear time.
The simplest solution is to make an assumption about the
order in which tempfiles are added and removed from the
list. If both operations iterate over the tempfiles in the
same order, then by putting new items at the end of the list
our removal search will always find its items at the
beginning of the list. And indeed, that would work for the
case of refs. But it creates a hidden dependency between
unrelated parts of the code. If anybody changes the ref code
(or if we add a new caller that opens multiple simultaneous
tempfiles) they may unknowingly introduce a performance
regression.
Another solution is to use a better data structure. A
doubly-linked list works fine, and we already have an
implementation in list.h. But there's one snag: the elements
of "struct tempfile" are all marked as "volatile", since a
signal handler may interrupt us and iterate over the list at
any moment (even if we were in the middle of adding a new
entry).
We can declare a "volatile struct list_head", but we can't
actually use it with the normal list functions. The compiler
complains about passing a pointer-to-volatile via a regular
pointer argument. And rightfully so, as the sub-function
would potentially need different code to deal with the
volatile case.
That leaves us with a few options:
1. Drop the "volatile" modifier for the list items.
This is probably a bad idea. I checked the assembly
output from "gcc -O2", and the "volatile" really does
impact the order in which it updates memory.
2. Use macros instead of inline functions. The irony here
is that list.h is entirely implemented as trivial
inline functions. So we basically are already
generating custom code for each call. But sadly there's no
way in C to declare the inline function to take a more
generic type.
We could do so by switching the inline functions to
macros, but it does make the end result harder to read.
And it doesn't fully solve the problem (for instance,
the declaration of list_head needs to change so that
its "prev" and "next" pointers point to other volatile
structs).
3. Don't use list.h, and just make our own ad-hoc
doubly-linked list. It's not that much code to
implement the basics that we need here. But if we're
going to do so, why not add the few extra lines
required to model it after the actual list.h interface?
We can even reuse a few of the macro helpers.
So this patch takes option 3, but actually implements a
parallel "volatile list" interface in list.h, where it could
potentially be reused by other code. This implements just
enough for tempfile.c's use, though we could easily port
other functions later if need be.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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The tempfile functions all take pointers to tempfile
objects, but do not check whether the argument is NULL.
This isn't a big deal in practice, since the lifetime of any
tempfile object is defined to last for the whole program. So
even if we try to call delete_tempfile() on an
already-deleted tempfile, our "active" check will tell us
that it's a noop.
In preparation for transitioning to a new system that
loosens the "tempfile objects can never be freed" rule,
let's tighten up our active checks:
1. A NULL pointer is now defined as "inactive" (so it will
BUG for most functions, but works as a silent noop for
things like delete_tempfile).
2. Functions should always do the "active" check before
looking at any of the struct fields.
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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When close_tempfile() fails, we delete the tempfile and
reset the fields of the tempfile struct. This makes it
easier for callers to return without cleaning up, but it
also makes this common pattern:
if (close_tempfile(tempfile))
return error_errno("error closing %s", tempfile->filename.buf);
wrong, because the "filename" field has been reset after the
failed close. And it's not easy to fix, as in many cases we
don't have another copy of the filename (e.g., if it was
created via one of the mks_tempfile functions, and we just
have the original template string).
Let's drop the feature that a failed close automatically
deletes the file. This puts the burden on the caller to do
the deletion themselves, but this isn't that big a deal.
Callers which do:
if (write(...) || close_tempfile(...)) {
delete_tempfile(...);
return -1;
}
already had to call delete when the write() failed, and so
aren't affected. Likewise, any caller which just calls die()
in the error path is OK; we'll delete the tempfile during
the atexit handler.
Because this patch changes the semantics of close_tempfile()
without changing its signature, all callers need to be
manually checked and converted to the new scheme. This patch
covers all in-tree callers, but there may be others for
not-yet-merged topics. To catch these, we rename the
function to close_tempfile_gently(), which will attract
compile-time attention to new callers. (Technically the
original could be considered "gentle" already in that it
didn't die() on errors, but this one is even more so).
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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When the index is locked and child processes inherit the handle to
said lock and the parent process wants to remove the lock before the
child process exits, on Windows there is a problem: it won't work
because files cannot be deleted if a process holds a handle on them.
The symptom:
Rename from 'xxx/.git/index.lock' to 'xxx/.git/index' failed.
Should I try again? (y/n)
Spawning child processes with bInheritHandles==FALSE would not work
because no file handles would be inherited, not even the hStdXxx
handles in STARTUPINFO (stdin/stdout/stderr).
Opening every file with O_NOINHERIT does not work, either, as e.g.
git-upload-pack expects inherited file handles.
This leaves us with the only way out: creating temp files with the
O_NOINHERIT flag. This flag is Windows-specific, however. For our
purposes, it is equivalent to O_CLOEXEC (which does not exist on
Windows), so let's just open temporary files with the O_CLOEXEC flag and
map that flag to O_NOINHERIT on Windows.
As Eric Wong pointed out, we need to be careful to handle the case where
the Linux headers used to compile Git support O_CLOEXEC but the Linux
kernel used to run Git does not: it returns an EINVAL.
This fixes the test that we just introduced to demonstrate the problem.
Signed-off-by: Ben Wijen <ben@wijen.net>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Allow an existing file to be registered with the tempfile-handling
infrastructure; in particular, arrange for it to be deleted on program
exit. This can be used if the temporary file has to be created in a
more complicated way than just open(). For example:
* If the file itself needs to be created via the lockfile API
* If it is not a regular file (e.g., a socket)
Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Add several functions for creating temporary files with
automatically-generated names, analogous to mkstemps(), but also
arranging for the files to be deleted on program exit.
The functions are named according to a pattern depending how they
operate. They will be used to replace many places in the code where
temporary files are created and cleaned up ad-hoc.
Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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A lot of work went into defining the state diagram for lockfiles and
ensuring correct, race-resistant cleanup in all circumstances.
Most of that infrastructure can be applied directly to *any* temporary
file. So extract a new "tempfile" module from the "lockfile" module.
Reimplement lockfile on top of tempfile.
Subsequent commits will add more users of the new module.
Signed-off-by: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Jeff King
Ben Wijen
Michael Haggerty