Add infrastructure to run a function asynchronously.

This adds start_async() and finish_async(), which runs a function
asynchronously. Communication with the caller happens only via pipes.
For this reason, this implementation forks off a child process that runs
the function.

[sp: Style nit fixed by removing unnecessary block on if condition
     inside of start_async()]

Signed-off-by: Johannes Sixt <johannes.sixt@telecom.at>
Signed-off-by: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>

1 files changed, 22 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/run-command.h b/run-command.h
index 35b9fb61f1..94e1e9d516 100644
--- a/run-command.h
+++ b/run-command.h
@@ -43,4 +43,26 @@ int run_command_v_opt_cd(const char **argv, int opt, const char *dir);
  */
 int run_command_v_opt_cd_env(const char **argv, int opt, const char *dir, const char *const *env);
 
+/*
+ * The purpose of the following functions is to feed a pipe by running
+ * a function asynchronously and providing output that the caller reads.
+ *
+ * It is expected that no synchronization and mutual exclusion between
+ * the caller and the feed function is necessary so that the function
+ * can run in a thread without interfering with the caller.
+ */
+struct async {
+	/*
+	 * proc writes to fd and closes it;
+	 * returns 0 on success, non-zero on failure
+	 */
+	int (*proc)(int fd, void *data);
+	void *data;
+	int out;	/* caller reads from here and closes it */
+	pid_t pid;
+};
+
+int start_async(struct async *async);
+int finish_async(struct async *async);
+
 #endif