Fix a race condition that causes Emacs to mess up glib.

The symptom is a diagnostic "GLib-WARNING **: In call to
g_spawn_sync(), exit status of a child process was requested but
SIGCHLD action was set to SIG_IGN and ECHILD was received by
waitpid(), so exit status can't be returned."  The diagnostic
is partly wrong, as the SIGCHLD action is not set to SIG_IGN.
The real bug is a race condition between Emacs and glib: Emacs
does a waitpid (-1, ...) and reaps glib's subprocess by mistake,
so that glib can't find it.  Work around the bug by invoking
waitpid only on subprocesses that Emacs itself creates.
* process.c (create_process, record_child_status_change):
Don't use special value -1 in pid field, as the caller now must
know the pid rather than having the callee infer it.  The
inference was sometimes incorrect anyway, due to another race.
(create_process): Set new 'alive' member if child is created.
(process_status_retrieved): New function.
(record_child_status_change): Use it.
Accept negative 1st argument, which means to wait for the
processes that Emacs already knows about.  Move special-case code
for DOS_NT (which lacks WNOHANG) here, from caller.  Keep track of
processes that have already been waited for, by testing and
clearing new 'alive' member.
(CAN_HANDLE_MULTIPLE_CHILDREN): Remove, as record_child_status_change
now does this internally.
(handle_child_signal): Let record_child_status_change do all
the work, since we do not want to reap all exited child processes,
only the child processes that Emacs itself created.
* process.h (Lisp_Process): New boolean member 'alive'.

Fixes: debbugs:8855

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/process.h b/src/process.h
index ce3d2e702cc..74d1a124060 100644
--- a/src/process.h
+++ b/src/process.h
@@ -142,6 +142,9 @@ struct Lisp_Process
     /* Flag to set coding-system of the process buffer from the
        coding_system used to decode process output.  */
     unsigned int inherit_coding_system_flag : 1;
+    /* Whether the process is alive, i.e., can be waited for.  Running
+       processes can be waited for, but exited and fake processes cannot.  */
+    unsigned int alive : 1;
     /* Record the process status in the raw form in which it comes from `wait'.
        This is to avoid consing in a signal handler.  The `raw_status_new'
        flag indicates that `raw_status' contains a new status that still