| > Let's say I am using JNA. [...] It is not safe to call fork. Are you calling fork() from Java, from C, or using the system call number? Because I'd agree calling it from Java might be unsafe (depends on how Java and JNA interact), but I believe calling it from C or the system call is perfectly fine. And this is in line with what I've written previously. > But that isn't robust. It's not supposed to be robust in the way you are describing. The fork-exec model is low level. It is supposed to be low level. Doing high level things with it is supposed to take some work by the application. That's not a deficiency. If you build too many things into the low level code, you run into trouble because now you've got 10x as many ways to fail (building your pipes, writing your error messages, marshalling error state, cleaning up, you name it). Also, some programs will want to do some of those higher level things differently, so instead of baking them into the API and having tons of parameters and paying for some of that overhead (like creating a pipe and writing error messages to the parent for every single fork and exec) you only do that when you want it. |