bug#8938: make timeout and CTRL-C

[Alan Curry]

Bob Proulx writes:
> 
> P=E1draig Brady wrote:
> > Paul Eggert wrote:
> > > I'd like to have an option to 'timeout' so that
> > > it merely calls alarm(2) and then execs COMMAND.
> > > This would be simple and fast would avoid the problem
> > > in question.  This approach has its own issues, but
> > > when it works it works great, and it'd be a nice option.
> 
> I agree.  It is nice and simple and well understood.
> 
> > The main problem with that is would only send the signal to the
> > first process, and any processes it started would keep running.
> 
> Then that is a problem for that parent process to keep track of its
> own children.  It is a recursive situation.  If all processes are well
> behaved then it works okay.  And if you ask about processes that are
> not well behaved then my response would be to fix them so that they
> are better behaved.

That sounds reasonable, but then if something is about to be killed by
timeout, there's reason to believe it's not behaving well at the moment.

-- 
Alan Curry