bug#8938: make timeout and CTRL-C

[Pádraig Brady]

On 28/06/11 21:32, Alan Curry wrote:
> 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.
> 
Well think of a shell script that has started lots of processes.
Many (most) will rely on signal propagation to the group
to clean things up.

cheers,
Pâdraig.