5 ms·

Microsoft Research has a paper about the very same issue (2019): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/a-fork-in-the-road/ https://www.microsoft.

Microsoft Research has a paper about the very same issue (2019): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/a-fork-in-the-road/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/a-fork-...

cryptonector 5y ago
It's a very good paper, yeah. I will link it from the gist.
georgia_peach 5y ago
That paper smacks of a Chesterton Fence. They haven't come up with a tested replacement for many of the use cases, i.e.: These designs are not yet general enough to cover all the use-cases outlined above, but perhaps can serve as a starting point... yet bullet #1 in the next paragraph is Deprecate Fork I think this is a case of security guys being upset about fork gumming-up their experiments. I don't really care about their experiments. The security regime for the past 20 years may have bought us a little more security against eastern bloc hackers, but it hasn't done squat to protect us from Apple, Google, & Microsoft! I have never had a virus de-rail my computing life as much as the automatic Windows 10 upgrade. Robert Morris got 400 hours community service for a relatively benign worm. If that's the penalty scale, Redmond should get actual time in the slammer for Cortana, forced Windows Update, and adding telemetry to Calculator.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  You fail to address any of the substance of their paper, or of my gist (TFA), then go on a rant about unrelated things. The authors of that paper deserve better treatment even if you hate Microsoft.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - georgia_peach 5y ago
    I did. Chesterton Fence. fork() has been in Unix from the beginning. Taking it out at this point will cause more problems than it solves. Until you have a working Unix distro (kernel AND common userland services) that elegantly covers all of the forkless cases, your paper and their paper are just opinions. Theirs is a formally written one. Yours is a clickbaity one. And casting vfork() as any kind of improvement here is just bonkers. And the rant is totally related: i.e. devs breaking things that worked just fine to begin with for the sake of doctrinal purity. It is usually a false doctrine.
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      I'm not proposing that fork() be removed. Microsoft is much more interested in not ever implementing fork() than I am in removing it. So your dilapidated fence can stay up where it's up.

cryptonector 5y ago

It's a very good paper, yeah. I will link it from the gist.

georgia_peach 5y ago

That paper smacks of a Chesterton Fence. They haven't come up with a tested replacement for many of the use cases, i.e.: These designs are not yet general enough to cover all the use-cases outlined above, but perhaps can serve as a starting point... yet bullet #1 in the next paragraph is Deprecate Fork I think this is a case of security guys being upset about fork gumming-up their experiments. I don't really care about their experiments. The security regime for the past 20 years may have bought us a little more security against eastern bloc hackers, but it hasn't done squat to protect us from Apple, Google, & Microsoft! I have never had a virus de-rail my computing life as much as the automatic Windows 10 upgrade. Robert Morris got 400 hours community service for a relatively benign worm. If that's the penalty scale, Redmond should get actual time in the slammer for Cortana, forced Windows Update, and adding telemetry to Calculator.

cryptonector 5y ago
You fail to address any of the substance of their paper, or of my gist (TFA), then go on a rant about unrelated things. The authors of that paper deserve better treatment even if you hate Microsoft.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- georgia_peach 5y ago
  I did. Chesterton Fence. fork() has been in Unix from the beginning. Taking it out at this point will cause more problems than it solves. Until you have a working Unix distro (kernel AND common userland services) that elegantly covers all of the forkless cases, your paper and their paper are just opinions. Theirs is a formally written one. Yours is a clickbaity one. And casting vfork() as any kind of improvement here is just bonkers. And the rant is totally related: i.e. devs breaking things that worked just fine to begin with for the sake of doctrinal purity. It is usually a false doctrine.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    I'm not proposing that fork() be removed. Microsoft is much more interested in not ever implementing fork() than I am in removing it. So your dilapidated fence can stay up where it's up.