Linus Torvalds <[email protected]> wrote: > Also, if people really want to optimize the code that executes an > external program (whether in shell or directly), I think it might be > worth it to look at replacing the "fork()" with a "vfork()". > > Something like this > > - cmd->pid = fork(); > + cmd->pid = (cmd->git_cmd || cmd->env) ? fork() : vfork(); > > might work (the native git_cmd case needs a real fork, and if we > change the environment variables we need it too, but the other cases > look like they might work with vfork()). > > Using vfork() can be hugely more efficient, because you don't have the > extra page table copies and teardown, but also avoid a lot of possible > copy-on-write faults.
Fwiw, most of the vfork preparation was already done by Brandon and myself a few weeks ago, and cooking in pu. I think only the patch below would be needed to enable vfork (along with any build-time detection) However, I haven't noticed enough forking in git to make a difference (but maybe others do). I think it would make a bigger difference if such changes were made to bash, dash, make, and perl5. --------8<------------ Subject: [PATCH] run-command: use vfork instead of fork To enable vfork, we merely have to avoid modifying memory we share with the parent, so the guard functions `child_(error|warn|die)_fn` can now be disabled. FIXME: still missing autoconf + Makefile portability tweaks. Signed-off-by: Eric Wong <[email protected]> --- run-command.c | 28 +--------------------------- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 27 deletions(-) diff --git a/run-command.c b/run-command.c index 9e36151bf9..0292dd94b6 100644 --- a/run-command.c +++ b/run-command.c @@ -324,25 +324,6 @@ static void fake_fatal(const char *err, va_list params) vreportf("fatal: ", err, params); } -static void child_error_fn(const char *err, va_list params) -{ - const char msg[] = "error() should not be called in child\n"; - xwrite(2, msg, sizeof(msg) - 1); -} - -static void child_warn_fn(const char *err, va_list params) -{ - const char msg[] = "warn() should not be called in child\n"; - xwrite(2, msg, sizeof(msg) - 1); -} - -static void NORETURN child_die_fn(const char *err, va_list params) -{ - const char msg[] = "die() should not be called in child\n"; - xwrite(2, msg, sizeof(msg) - 1); - _exit(2); -} - /* this runs in the parent process */ static void child_err_spew(struct child_process *cmd, struct child_err *cerr) { @@ -658,17 +639,10 @@ int start_command(struct child_process *cmd) * never be released in the child process. This means only * Async-Signal-Safe functions are permitted in the child. */ - cmd->pid = fork(); + cmd->pid = vfork(); failed_errno = errno; if (!cmd->pid) { int sig; - /* - * Ensure the default die/error/warn routines do not get - * called, they can take stdio locks and malloc. - */ - set_die_routine(child_die_fn); - set_error_routine(child_error_fn); - set_warn_routine(child_warn_fn); close(notify_pipe[0]); set_cloexec(notify_pipe[1]); -- Also fetchable: git://bogomips.org/git-svn vfork-test commit 5f88d79182aaabc5ea467d1d29e13e45bd2b99bf
