Distinguish more clearly between wait status and exit statuswip/wait-status

On Unix platforms, wait() and friends yield an integer that encodes
how the process exited. Confusingly, this is usually not the same as
the integer passed to exit() or returned from main().

I find that it's clearer what is going on if we are consistent about
referring to the result of wait() as a "wait status", and the value
passed to exit() as an "exit status".

GSubprocess already gets this right: g_subprocess_get_status() returns
the wait status, while g_subprocess_get_exit_status() genuinely returns
the exit status. However, the GSpawn family of APIs has tended to
conflate the two.

Confusingly, g_spawn_check_exit_status() has always checked a wait
status, and it would not be correct to pass an exit status to it.
Deprecate it in favour of g_spawn_check_wait_status(), which does
the same thing.

Signed-off-by: Simon McVittie <smcv@collabora.com>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/glib/gmain.h b/glib/gmain.h
index 5c0e524cc..245a0c2ad 100644
--- a/glib/gmain.h
+++ b/glib/gmain.h
@@ -193,16 +193,20 @@ typedef gboolean (*GSourceFunc)       (gpointer user_data);
 /**
  * GChildWatchFunc:
  * @pid: the process id of the child process
- * @status: Status information about the child process, encoded
- *     in a platform-specific manner
+ * @wait_status: Status information about the child process, encoded
+ *               in a platform-specific manner
  * @user_data: user data passed to g_child_watch_add()
  *
  * Prototype of a #GChildWatchSource callback, called when a child
- * process has exited.  To interpret @status, see the documentation
- * for g_spawn_check_exit_status().
+ * process has exited.
+ *
+ * To interpret @wait_status, see the documentation
+ * for g_spawn_check_wait_status(). In particular,
+ * on Unix platforms, note that it is usually not equal
+ * to the integer passed to `exit` or returned from `main`.
  */
 typedef void     (*GChildWatchFunc)   (GPid     pid,
-                                       gint     status,
+                                       gint     wait_status,
                                        gpointer user_data);