Re: Spawn support in pkgsrc tools - Google Summer of Code 2016

[Andreas Theodosiou <andreas%atheod.net@localhost>]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 02:35:20PM +0300, Aleksej Saushev wrote:
>   Hello,
>
> Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> writes:
>
> > On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 01:58:38AM +0000, Andreas Theodosiou wrote:
> >> the tools mentioned in my original message. I will also spent time
> >> reading code during the drafting of the proposal so perhaps the first
> >> item can be allocated even less time.
> >
> > Oh, I didn't intend to urge you to cut down time estimates, I just
> > wanted to point out that you should provide possible extensions.
> > The time is hard to guess, as it highly depends on the source code of the
> > tool you are converting - assuming you will be familiar with posix_spawn
> > itself after the second or third tool.
>
> >> As far as performance evaluation goes, after a discussion with Aleksej
> >> it is my opinion that instead of writing tests, testing use case
> >> scenarios such as the time taken to build a package, or a set of
> >> packages would offer greater insight into the impact of the code
> >> changes. At this point I would like to ask the prefered method of
> >> evaluating execution time in NetBSD. Would a sh script that uses time(1)
> >> and then logs the output suffice? Should a specific program be written?
> >
> > A few builds and time(1) should be good enough for this, no specific
> > program needs to be written, but you need to think about what tests
> > exactly you want to run (and check how stable the timings are ...)
>
> Probably, it is useful to point explicitly that the stability of tests
> like these is very subtle issue. It may demand a lot more work than
> originally anticipated. ("Few" may easily grow to "few decades.")
>

I will plan to run several tests to investigate the stability issue. I
will also consider allocating more time to the testing phase of the
project to compensate for possible problems that may arise.

> >> Possible extensions could be implementing posix_spawn in system(3) and in
> >> shells/bash.
> >
> > Good, maybe you can find a few more like that? popen(3) maybe?
>
> Since we're talking about pkgsrc, I think, that it is useful to remind
> that NetBSD is not the only operating system implementing posix_spawn.
> This may give enough space to extend the scope.
>

It is possible to add investigating possible posix_spawn
implementation in pkgsrc tools on other OS's such as FreeBSD as an
extension exercise.

>
> --
> HE CE3OH...
>

Best regards,

Andreas