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Revision: 1.7
Committed: Sun Apr 21 12:26:00 2013 UTC (11 years ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-1_0
Changes since 1.6: +108 -4 lines
Log Message:
1.0

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# Content
1 NAME
2 AnyEvent::Fork - everything you wanted to use fork() for, but couldn't
3
4 SYNOPSIS
5 use AnyEvent::Fork;
6
7 AnyEvent::Fork
8 ->new
9 ->require ("MyModule")
10 ->run ("MyModule::server", my $cv = AE::cv);
11
12 my $fh = $cv->recv;
13
14 DESCRIPTION
15 This module allows you to create new processes, without actually forking
16 them from your current process (avoiding the problems of forking), but
17 preserving most of the advantages of fork.
18
19 It can be used to create new worker processes or new independent
20 subprocesses for short- and long-running jobs, process pools (e.g. for
21 use in pre-forked servers) but also to spawn new external processes
22 (such as CGI scripts from a web server), which can be faster (and more
23 well behaved) than using fork+exec in big processes.
24
25 Special care has been taken to make this module useful from other
26 modules, while still supporting specialised environments such as
27 App::Staticperl or PAR::Packer.
28
29 WHAT THIS MODULE IS NOT
30 This module only creates processes and lets you pass file handles and
31 strings to it, and run perl code. It does not implement any kind of RPC
32 - there is no back channel from the process back to you, and there is no
33 RPC or message passing going on.
34
35 If you need some form of RPC, you could use the AnyEvent::Fork::RPC
36 companion module, which adds simple RPC/job queueing to a process
37 created by this module.
38
39 And if you need some automatic process pool management on top of
40 AnyEvent::Fork::RPC, you can look at the AnyEvent::Fork::Pool companion
41 module.
42
43 Or you can implement it yourself in whatever way you like: use some
44 message-passing module such as AnyEvent::MP, some pipe such as
45 AnyEvent::ZeroMQ, use AnyEvent::Handle on both sides to send e.g. JSON
46 or Storable messages, and so on.
47
48 COMPARISON TO OTHER MODULES
49 There is an abundance of modules on CPAN that do "something fork", such
50 as Parallel::ForkManager, AnyEvent::ForkManager, AnyEvent::Worker or
51 AnyEvent::Subprocess. There are modules that implement their own process
52 management, such as AnyEvent::DBI.
53
54 The problems that all these modules try to solve are real, however, none
55 of them (from what I have seen) tackle the very real problems of
56 unwanted memory sharing, efficiency, not being able to use event
57 processing or similar modules in the processes they create.
58
59 This module doesn't try to replace any of them - instead it tries to
60 solve the problem of creating processes with a minimum of fuss and
61 overhead (and also luxury). Ideally, most of these would use
62 AnyEvent::Fork internally, except they were written before AnyEvent:Fork
63 was available, so obviously had to roll their own.
64
65 PROBLEM STATEMENT
66 There are two traditional ways to implement parallel processing on UNIX
67 like operating systems - fork and process, and fork+exec and process.
68 They have different advantages and disadvantages that I describe below,
69 together with how this module tries to mitigate the disadvantages.
70
71 Forking from a big process can be very slow.
72 A 5GB process needs 0.05s to fork on my 3.6GHz amd64 GNU/Linux box.
73 This overhead is often shared with exec (because you have to fork
74 first), but in some circumstances (e.g. when vfork is used),
75 fork+exec can be much faster.
76
77 This module can help here by telling a small(er) helper process to
78 fork, which is faster then forking the main process, and also uses
79 vfork where possible. This gives the speed of vfork, with the
80 flexibility of fork.
81
82 Forking usually creates a copy-on-write copy of the parent process.
83 For example, modules or data files that are loaded will not use
84 additional memory after a fork. When exec'ing a new process, modules
85 and data files might need to be loaded again, at extra CPU and
86 memory cost. But when forking, literally all data structures are
87 copied - if the program frees them and replaces them by new data,
88 the child processes will retain the old version even if it isn't
89 used, which can suddenly and unexpectedly increase memory usage when
90 freeing memory.
91
92 The trade-off is between more sharing with fork (which can be good
93 or bad), and no sharing with exec.
94
95 This module allows the main program to do a controlled fork, and
96 allows modules to exec processes safely at any time. When creating a
97 custom process pool you can take advantage of data sharing via fork
98 without risking to share large dynamic data structures that will
99 blow up child memory usage.
100
101 In other words, this module puts you into control over what is being
102 shared and what isn't, at all times.
103
104 Exec'ing a new perl process might be difficult.
105 For example, it is not easy to find the correct path to the perl
106 interpreter - $^X might not be a perl interpreter at all.
107
108 This module tries hard to identify the correct path to the perl
109 interpreter. With a cooperative main program, exec'ing the
110 interpreter might not even be necessary, but even without help from
111 the main program, it will still work when used from a module.
112
113 Exec'ing a new perl process might be slow, as all necessary modules have
114 to be loaded from disk again, with no guarantees of success.
115 Long running processes might run into problems when perl is upgraded
116 and modules are no longer loadable because they refer to a different
117 perl version, or parts of a distribution are newer than the ones
118 already loaded.
119
120 This module supports creating pre-initialised perl processes to be
121 used as a template for new processes.
122
123 Forking might be impossible when a program is running.
124 For example, POSIX makes it almost impossible to fork from a
125 multi-threaded program while doing anything useful in the child - in
126 fact, if your perl program uses POSIX threads (even indirectly via
127 e.g. IO::AIO or threads), you cannot call fork on the perl level
128 anymore without risking corruption issues on a number of operating
129 systems.
130
131 This module can safely fork helper processes at any time, by calling
132 fork+exec in C, in a POSIX-compatible way (via Proc::FastSpawn).
133
134 Parallel processing with fork might be inconvenient or difficult to
135 implement. Modules might not work in both parent and child.
136 For example, when a program uses an event loop and creates watchers
137 it becomes very hard to use the event loop from a child program, as
138 the watchers already exist but are only meaningful in the parent.
139 Worse, a module might want to use such a module, not knowing whether
140 another module or the main program also does, leading to problems.
141
142 Apart from event loops, graphical toolkits also commonly fall into
143 the "unsafe module" category, or just about anything that
144 communicates with the external world, such as network libraries and
145 file I/O modules, which usually don't like being copied and then
146 allowed to continue in two processes.
147
148 With this module only the main program is allowed to create new
149 processes by forking (because only the main program can know when it
150 is still safe to do so) - all other processes are created via
151 fork+exec, which makes it possible to use modules such as event
152 loops or window interfaces safely.
153
154 EXAMPLES
155 Create a single new process, tell it to run your worker function.
156 AnyEvent::Fork
157 ->new
158 ->require ("MyModule")
159 ->run ("MyModule::worker, sub {
160 my ($master_filehandle) = @_;
161
162 # now $master_filehandle is connected to the
163 # $slave_filehandle in the new process.
164 });
165
166 "MyModule" might look like this:
167
168 package MyModule;
169
170 sub worker {
171 my ($slave_filehandle) = @_;
172
173 # now $slave_filehandle is connected to the $master_filehandle
174 # in the original prorcess. have fun!
175 }
176
177 Create a pool of server processes all accepting on the same socket.
178 # create listener socket
179 my $listener = ...;
180
181 # create a pool template, initialise it and give it the socket
182 my $pool = AnyEvent::Fork
183 ->new
184 ->require ("Some::Stuff", "My::Server")
185 ->send_fh ($listener);
186
187 # now create 10 identical workers
188 for my $id (1..10) {
189 $pool
190 ->fork
191 ->send_arg ($id)
192 ->run ("My::Server::run");
193 }
194
195 # now do other things - maybe use the filehandle provided by run
196 # to wait for the processes to die. or whatever.
197
198 "My::Server" might look like this:
199
200 package My::Server;
201
202 sub run {
203 my ($slave, $listener, $id) = @_;
204
205 close $slave; # we do not use the socket, so close it to save resources
206
207 # we could go ballistic and use e.g. AnyEvent here, or IO::AIO,
208 # or anything we usually couldn't do in a process forked normally.
209 while (my $socket = $listener->accept) {
210 # do sth. with new socket
211 }
212 }
213
214 use AnyEvent::Fork as a faster fork+exec
215 This runs "/bin/echo hi", with standard output redirected to /tmp/log
216 and standard error redirected to the communications socket. It is
217 usually faster than fork+exec, but still lets you prepare the
218 environment.
219
220 open my $output, ">/tmp/log" or die "$!";
221
222 AnyEvent::Fork
223 ->new
224 ->eval ('
225 # compile a helper function for later use
226 sub run {
227 my ($fh, $output, @cmd) = @_;
228
229 # perl will clear close-on-exec on STDOUT/STDERR
230 open STDOUT, ">&", $output or die;
231 open STDERR, ">&", $fh or die;
232
233 exec @cmd;
234 }
235 ')
236 ->send_fh ($output)
237 ->send_arg ("/bin/echo", "hi")
238 ->run ("run", my $cv = AE::cv);
239
240 my $stderr = $cv->recv;
241
242 For stingy users: put the worker code into a "DATA" section.
243 When you want to be stingy with files, you cna put your code into the
244 "DATA" section of your module (or program):
245
246 use AnyEvent::Fork;
247
248 AnyEvent::Fork
249 ->new
250 ->eval (do { local $/; <DATA> })
251 ->run ("doit", sub { ... });
252
253 __DATA__
254
255 sub doit {
256 ... do something!
257 }
258
259 For stingy standalone programs: do not rely on external files at
260 all.
261 For single-file scripts it can be inconvenient to rely on external files
262 - even when using < "DATA" section, you still need to "exec" an external
263 perl interpreter, which might not be available when using
264 App::Staticperl, Urlader or PAR::Packer for example.
265
266 Two modules help here - AnyEvent::Fork::Early forks a template process
267 for all further calls to "new_exec", and AnyEvent::Fork::Template forks
268 the main program as a template process.
269
270 Here is how your main program should look like:
271
272 #! perl
273
274 # optional, as the very first thing.
275 # in case modules want to create their own processes.
276 use AnyEvent::Fork::Early;
277
278 # next, load all modules you need in your template process
279 use Example::My::Module
280 use Example::Whatever;
281
282 # next, put your run function definition and anything else you
283 # need, but do not use code outside of BEGIN blocks.
284 sub worker_run {
285 my ($fh, @args) = @_;
286 ...
287 }
288
289 # now preserve everything so far as AnyEvent::Fork object
290 # in §TEMPLATE.
291 use AnyEvent::Fork::Template;
292
293 # do not put code outside of BEGIN blocks until here
294
295 # now use the $TEMPLATE process in any way you like
296
297 # for example: create 10 worker processes
298 my @worker;
299 my $cv = AE::cv;
300 for (1..10) {
301 $cv->begin;
302 $TEMPLATE->fork->send_arg ($_)->run ("worker_run", sub {
303 push @worker, shift;
304 $cv->end;
305 });
306 }
307 $cv->recv;
308
309 lhead1 CONCEPTS
310
311 This module can create new processes either by executing a new perl
312 process, or by forking from an existing "template" process.
313
314 All these processes are called "child processes" (whether they are
315 direct children or not), while the process that manages them is called
316 the "parent process".
317
318 Each such process comes with its own file handle that can be used to
319 communicate with it (it's actually a socket - one end in the new
320 process, one end in the main process), and among the things you can do
321 in it are load modules, fork new processes, send file handles to it, and
322 execute functions.
323
324 There are multiple ways to create additional processes to execute some
325 jobs:
326
327 fork a new process from the "default" template process, load code, run
328 it
329 This module has a "default" template process which it executes when
330 it is needed the first time. Forking from this process shares the
331 memory used for the perl interpreter with the new process, but
332 loading modules takes time, and the memory is not shared with
333 anything else.
334
335 This is ideal for when you only need one extra process of a kind,
336 with the option of starting and stopping it on demand.
337
338 Example:
339
340 AnyEvent::Fork
341 ->new
342 ->require ("Some::Module")
343 ->run ("Some::Module::run", sub {
344 my ($fork_fh) = @_;
345 });
346
347 fork a new template process, load code, then fork processes off of it
348 and run the code
349 When you need to have a bunch of processes that all execute the same
350 (or very similar) tasks, then a good way is to create a new template
351 process for them, loading all the modules you need, and then create
352 your worker processes from this new template process.
353
354 This way, all code (and data structures) that can be shared (e.g.
355 the modules you loaded) is shared between the processes, and each
356 new process consumes relatively little memory of its own.
357
358 The disadvantage of this approach is that you need to create a
359 template process for the sole purpose of forking new processes from
360 it, but if you only need a fixed number of processes you can create
361 them, and then destroy the template process.
362
363 Example:
364
365 my $template = AnyEvent::Fork->new->require ("Some::Module");
366
367 for (1..10) {
368 $template->fork->run ("Some::Module::run", sub {
369 my ($fork_fh) = @_;
370 });
371 }
372
373 # at this point, you can keep $template around to fork new processes
374 # later, or you can destroy it, which causes it to vanish.
375
376 execute a new perl interpreter, load some code, run it
377 This is relatively slow, and doesn't allow you to share memory
378 between multiple processes.
379
380 The only advantage is that you don't have to have a template process
381 hanging around all the time to fork off some new processes, which
382 might be an advantage when there are long time spans where no extra
383 processes are needed.
384
385 Example:
386
387 AnyEvent::Fork
388 ->new_exec
389 ->require ("Some::Module")
390 ->run ("Some::Module::run", sub {
391 my ($fork_fh) = @_;
392 });
393
394 THE "AnyEvent::Fork" CLASS
395 This module exports nothing, and only implements a single class -
396 "AnyEvent::Fork".
397
398 There are two class constructors that both create new processes - "new"
399 and "new_exec". The "fork" method creates a new process by forking an
400 existing one and could be considered a third constructor.
401
402 Most of the remaining methods deal with preparing the new process, by
403 loading code, evaluating code and sending data to the new process. They
404 usually return the process object, so you can chain method calls.
405
406 If a process object is destroyed before calling its "run" method, then
407 the process simply exits. After "run" is called, all responsibility is
408 passed to the specified function.
409
410 As long as there is any outstanding work to be done, process objects
411 resist being destroyed, so there is no reason to store them unless you
412 need them later - configure and forget works just fine.
413
414 my $proc = new AnyEvent::Fork
415 Create a new "empty" perl interpreter process and returns its
416 process object for further manipulation.
417
418 The new process is forked from a template process that is kept
419 around for this purpose. When it doesn't exist yet, it is created by
420 a call to "new_exec" first and then stays around for future calls.
421
422 $new_proc = $proc->fork
423 Forks $proc, creating a new process, and returns the process object
424 of the new process.
425
426 If any of the "send_" functions have been called before fork, then
427 they will be cloned in the child. For example, in a pre-forked
428 server, you might "send_fh" the listening socket into the template
429 process, and then keep calling "fork" and "run".
430
431 my $proc = new_exec AnyEvent::Fork
432 Create a new "empty" perl interpreter process and returns its
433 process object for further manipulation.
434
435 Unlike the "new" method, this method *always* spawns a new perl
436 process (except in some cases, see AnyEvent::Fork::Early for
437 details). This reduces the amount of memory sharing that is
438 possible, and is also slower.
439
440 You should use "new" whenever possible, except when having a
441 template process around is unacceptable.
442
443 The path to the perl interpreter is divined using various methods -
444 first $^X is investigated to see if the path ends with something
445 that sounds as if it were the perl interpreter. Failing this, the
446 module falls back to using $Config::Config{perlpath}.
447
448 $pid = $proc->pid
449 Returns the process id of the process *iff it is a direct child of
450 the process running AnyEvent::Fork*, and "undef" otherwise.
451
452 Normally, only processes created via "AnyEvent::Fork->new_exec" and
453 AnyEvent::Fork::Template are direct children, and you are
454 responsible to clean up their zombies when they die.
455
456 All other processes are not direct children, and will be cleaned up
457 by AnyEvent::Fork itself.
458
459 $proc = $proc->eval ($perlcode, @args)
460 Evaluates the given $perlcode as ... Perl code, while setting @_ to
461 the strings specified by @args, in the "main" package.
462
463 This call is meant to do any custom initialisation that might be
464 required (for example, the "require" method uses it). It's not
465 supposed to be used to completely take over the process, use "run"
466 for that.
467
468 The code will usually be executed after this call returns, and there
469 is no way to pass anything back to the calling process. Any
470 evaluation errors will be reported to stderr and cause the process
471 to exit.
472
473 If you want to execute some code (that isn't in a module) to take
474 over the process, you should compile a function via "eval" first,
475 and then call it via "run". This also gives you access to any
476 arguments passed via the "send_xxx" methods, such as file handles.
477 See the "use AnyEvent::Fork as a faster fork+exec" example to see it
478 in action.
479
480 Returns the process object for easy chaining of method calls.
481
482 $proc = $proc->require ($module, ...)
483 Tries to load the given module(s) into the process
484
485 Returns the process object for easy chaining of method calls.
486
487 $proc = $proc->send_fh ($handle, ...)
488 Send one or more file handles (*not* file descriptors) to the
489 process, to prepare a call to "run".
490
491 The process object keeps a reference to the handles until they have
492 been passed over to the process, so you must not explicitly close
493 the handles. This is most easily accomplished by simply not storing
494 the file handles anywhere after passing them to this method - when
495 AnyEvent::Fork is finished using them, perl will automatically close
496 them.
497
498 Returns the process object for easy chaining of method calls.
499
500 Example: pass a file handle to a process, and release it without
501 closing. It will be closed automatically when it is no longer used.
502
503 $proc->send_fh ($my_fh);
504 undef $my_fh; # free the reference if you want, but DO NOT CLOSE IT
505
506 $proc = $proc->send_arg ($string, ...)
507 Send one or more argument strings to the process, to prepare a call
508 to "run". The strings can be any octet strings.
509
510 The protocol is optimised to pass a moderate number of relatively
511 short strings - while you can pass up to 4GB of data in one go, this
512 is more meant to pass some ID information or other startup info, not
513 big chunks of data.
514
515 Returns the process object for easy chaining of method calls.
516
517 $proc->run ($func, $cb->($fh))
518 Enter the function specified by the function name in $func in the
519 process. The function is called with the communication socket as
520 first argument, followed by all file handles and string arguments
521 sent earlier via "send_fh" and "send_arg" methods, in the order they
522 were called.
523
524 The process object becomes unusable on return from this function -
525 any further method calls result in undefined behaviour.
526
527 The function name should be fully qualified, but if it isn't, it
528 will be looked up in the "main" package.
529
530 If the called function returns, doesn't exist, or any error occurs,
531 the process exits.
532
533 Preparing the process is done in the background - when all commands
534 have been sent, the callback is invoked with the local
535 communications socket as argument. At this point you can start using
536 the socket in any way you like.
537
538 If the communication socket isn't used, it should be closed on both
539 sides, to save on kernel memory.
540
541 The socket is non-blocking in the parent, and blocking in the newly
542 created process. The close-on-exec flag is set in both.
543
544 Even if not used otherwise, the socket can be a good indicator for
545 the existence of the process - if the other process exits, you get a
546 readable event on it, because exiting the process closes the socket
547 (if it didn't create any children using fork).
548
549 Example: create a template for a process pool, pass a few strings,
550 some file handles, then fork, pass one more string, and run some
551 code.
552
553 my $pool = AnyEvent::Fork
554 ->new
555 ->send_arg ("str1", "str2")
556 ->send_fh ($fh1, $fh2);
557
558 for (1..2) {
559 $pool
560 ->fork
561 ->send_arg ("str3")
562 ->run ("Some::function", sub {
563 my ($fh) = @_;
564
565 # fh is nonblocking, but we trust that the OS can accept these
566 # few octets anyway.
567 syswrite $fh, "hi #$_\n";
568
569 # $fh is being closed here, as we don't store it anywhere
570 });
571 }
572
573 # Some::function might look like this - all parameters passed before fork
574 # and after will be passed, in order, after the communications socket.
575 sub Some::function {
576 my ($fh, $str1, $str2, $fh1, $fh2, $str3) = @_;
577
578 print scalar <$fh>; # prints "hi #1\n" and "hi #2\n" in any order
579 }
580
581 $proc->to_fh ($cb->($fh)) # EXPERIMENTAL, MIGHT BE REMOVED
582 Flushes all commands out to the process and then calls the callback
583 with the communications socket.
584
585 The process object becomes unusable on return from this function -
586 any further method calls result in undefined behaviour.
587
588 The point of this method is to give you a file handle thta you cna
589 pass to another process. In that other process, you can call
590 "new_from_fh AnyEvent::Fork" to create a new "AnyEvent::Fork" object
591 from it, thereby effectively passing a fork object to another
592 process.
593
594 new_from_fh AnyEvent::Fork $fh # EXPERIMENTAL, MIGHT BE REMOVED
595 Takes a file handle originally rceeived by the "to_fh" method and
596 creates a new "AnyEvent:Fork" object. The child process itself will
597 not change in any way, i.e. it will keep all the modifications done
598 to it before calling "to_fh".
599
600 The new object is very much like the original object, except that
601 the "pid" method will return "undef" even if the process is a direct
602 child.
603
604 PERFORMANCE
605 Now for some unscientific benchmark numbers (all done on an amd64
606 GNU/Linux box). These are intended to give you an idea of the relative
607 performance you can expect, they are not meant to be absolute
608 performance numbers.
609
610 OK, so, I ran a simple benchmark that creates a socket pair, forks,
611 calls exit in the child and waits for the socket to close in the parent.
612 I did load AnyEvent, EV and AnyEvent::Fork, for a total process size of
613 5100kB.
614
615 2079 new processes per second, using manual socketpair + fork
616
617 Then I did the same thing, but instead of calling fork, I called
618 AnyEvent::Fork->new->run ("CORE::exit") and then again waited for the
619 socket from the child to close on exit. This does the same thing as
620 manual socket pair + fork, except that what is forked is the template
621 process (2440kB), and the socket needs to be passed to the server at the
622 other end of the socket first.
623
624 2307 new processes per second, using AnyEvent::Fork->new
625
626 And finally, using "new_exec" instead "new", using vforks+execs to exec
627 a new perl interpreter and compile the small server each time, I get:
628
629 479 vfork+execs per second, using AnyEvent::Fork->new_exec
630
631 So how can "AnyEvent->new" be faster than a standard fork, even though
632 it uses the same operations, but adds a lot of overhead?
633
634 The difference is simply the process size: forking the 5MB process takes
635 so much longer than forking the 2.5MB template process that the extra
636 overhead is canceled out.
637
638 If the benchmark process grows, the normal fork becomes even slower:
639
640 1340 new processes, manual fork of a 20MB process
641 731 new processes, manual fork of a 200MB process
642 235 new processes, manual fork of a 2000MB process
643
644 What that means (to me) is that I can use this module without having a
645 bad conscience because of the extra overhead required to start new
646 processes.
647
648 TYPICAL PROBLEMS
649 This section lists typical problems that remain. I hope by recognising
650 them, most can be avoided.
651
652 leaked file descriptors for exec'ed processes
653 POSIX systems inherit file descriptors by default when exec'ing a
654 new process. While perl itself laudably sets the close-on-exec flags
655 on new file handles, most C libraries don't care, and even if all
656 cared, it's often not possible to set the flag in a race-free
657 manner.
658
659 That means some file descriptors can leak through. And since it
660 isn't possible to know which file descriptors are "good" and
661 "necessary" (or even to know which file descriptors are open), there
662 is no good way to close the ones that might harm.
663
664 As an example of what "harm" can be done consider a web server that
665 accepts connections and afterwards some module uses AnyEvent::Fork
666 for the first time, causing it to fork and exec a new process, which
667 might inherit the network socket. When the server closes the socket,
668 it is still open in the child (which doesn't even know that) and the
669 client might conclude that the connection is still fine.
670
671 For the main program, there are multiple remedies available -
672 AnyEvent::Fork::Early is one, creating a process early and not using
673 "new_exec" is another, as in both cases, the first process can be
674 exec'ed well before many random file descriptors are open.
675
676 In general, the solution for these kind of problems is to fix the
677 libraries or the code that leaks those file descriptors.
678
679 Fortunately, most of these leaked descriptors do no harm, other than
680 sitting on some resources.
681
682 leaked file descriptors for fork'ed processes
683 Normally, AnyEvent::Fork does start new processes by exec'ing them,
684 which closes file descriptors not marked for being inherited.
685
686 However, AnyEvent::Fork::Early and AnyEvent::Fork::Template offer a
687 way to create these processes by forking, and this leaks more file
688 descriptors than exec'ing them, as there is no way to mark
689 descriptors as "close on fork".
690
691 An example would be modules like EV, IO::AIO or Gtk2. Both create
692 pipes for internal uses, and Gtk2 might open a connection to the X
693 server. EV and IO::AIO can deal with fork, but Gtk2 might have
694 trouble with a fork.
695
696 The solution is to either not load these modules before use'ing
697 AnyEvent::Fork::Early or AnyEvent::Fork::Template, or to delay
698 initialising them, for example, by calling "init Gtk2" manually.
699
700 exiting calls object destructors
701 This only applies to users of AnyEvent::Fork:Early and
702 AnyEvent::Fork::Template, or when initialising code creates objects
703 that reference external resources.
704
705 When a process created by AnyEvent::Fork exits, it might do so by
706 calling exit, or simply letting perl reach the end of the program.
707 At which point Perl runs all destructors.
708
709 Not all destructors are fork-safe - for example, an object that
710 represents the connection to an X display might tell the X server to
711 free resources, which is inconvenient when the "real" object in the
712 parent still needs to use them.
713
714 This is obviously not a problem for AnyEvent::Fork::Early, as you
715 used it as the very first thing, right?
716
717 It is a problem for AnyEvent::Fork::Template though - and the
718 solution is to not create objects with nontrivial destructors that
719 might have an effect outside of Perl.
720
721 PORTABILITY NOTES
722 Native win32 perls are somewhat supported (AnyEvent::Fork::Early is a
723 nop, and ::Template is not going to work), and it cost a lot of blood
724 and sweat to make it so, mostly due to the bloody broken perl that
725 nobody seems to care about. The fork emulation is a bad joke - I have
726 yet to see something useful that you can do with it without running into
727 memory corruption issues or other braindamage. Hrrrr.
728
729 Since fork is endlessly broken on win32 perls (it doesn't even remotely
730 work within it's documented limits) and quite obviously it's not getting
731 improved any time soon, the best way to proceed on windows would be to
732 always use "new_exec" and thus never rely on perl's fork "emulation".
733
734 Cygwin perl is not supported at the moment due to some hilarious
735 shortcomings of its API - see IO::FDPoll for more details. If you never
736 use "send_fh" and always use "new_exec" to create processes, it should
737 work though.
738
739 SEE ALSO
740 AnyEvent::Fork::Early, to avoid executing a perl interpreter at all
741 (part of this distribution).
742
743 AnyEvent::Fork::Template, to create a process by forking the main
744 program at a convenient time (part of this distribution).
745
746 AnyEvent::Fork::RPC, for simple RPC to child processes (on CPAN).
747
748 AnyEvent::Fork::Pool, for simple worker process pool (on CPAN).
749
750 AUTHOR AND CONTACT INFORMATION
751 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
752 http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/AnyEvent-Fork
753