From owner-freebsd-current  Sat Apr 20 23:19:34 1996
Return-Path: owner-current
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id XAA26654
          for current-outgoing; Sat, 20 Apr 1996 23:19:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from xi.dorm.umd.edu (root@xi.dorm.umd.edu [129.2.152.45])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA26649
          for <current@freebsd.org>; Sat, 20 Apr 1996 23:19:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (smpatel@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by xi.dorm.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id CAA01170; Sun, 21 Apr 1996 02:19:20 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 02:19:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sujal Patel <smpatel@umiacs.umd.edu>
X-Sender: smpatel@xi.dorm.umd.edu
To: Peter Wemm <peter@jhome.DIALix.COM>
cc: current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Changes for vfork()
In-Reply-To: <peter.830051445@jhome.DIALix.COM>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.92.960421021554.203A-100000@xi.dorm.umd.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

On 21 Apr 1996, Peter Wemm wrote:

> Note that there are some programs still using these features..  tcsh,
> for one, uses the shared address space semantics to update some statistics
> in the parent.

This is an absolutely horrible thing for a user program to do.  The
vfork() call was never intended to allow you to update the parent's
address space and as the man page states, should never be used in such a
way.  Besides, FreeBSD doesn't have an implementation that supports this
anyway :)  If tcsh (I think it's actually csh) *really* wants to update
some of the parents address space on FreeBSD, it should use rfork()
instead IMO.


Sujal