Re: linux-proc readlink patch

[Michael Snyder <msnyder at redhat dot com>]

Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> 
> This patch:
> 
> 2002-01-08  Michael Snyder  <msnyder@redhat.com>
> 
>         * linux-proc.c (child_pid_to_exec_file): Use readlink to get the
>         real name of the executable, rather than the /proc name.
> 
> (which I never saw posted on gdb-patches; was that an artifact of the email
> breakage yesterday?)

Coulda been.  I sent so many yesterday (and had to resend so many of
them)
that I can't remember.

> 
> seems to have at least one problem.
> 
> (1) It introduces a memory leak, if I understand the semantics of cleanups
> correctly.  make_cleanup's cleanups will only be called (according to the
> comment in utils.c) after a failed command.

Nope, that's not the semantics.  Cleanups are always done, no later than
when the command is finished executing (if not earlier).  I even checked
to make sure that these were done.  There's no memory leak.


> (2) It is not, IIRC, always correct in the case of chroots.  Handling for
> this has changed across Linux versions several times.  On 2.2 it seems to be
> correct (to my surprise, actually), but I believe it is not on 2.0.  Do we
> care?  Probably not, as 2.0 is now -very- old.

Well, if it fails, the code falls back to using the original /proc name.