RFR 9: 8087286 Need a way to handle control-C and possibly some other signals

Stuart Marks stuart.marks at oracle.com
Tue Feb 2 22:08:18 UTC 2016


Hi Roger,

It will be good to get this into the JDK. Lots of people have been asking for this.

I have a few comments on the API.

1) Is there a way to query the set of signals supported? This might be a 
Set<String> returned by a static method, for example. I agree that signal 
strings outside this set shouldn't be supported.

2) The Signal class spec mentions SIGINT, SIGHUP, and SIGTERM explicitly. Are 
these required to be implemented on all platforms, or just on "unix-like" 
platforms, are they just examples? What signals are available on Windows?

3) raise() is spec'd to throw an exception if there's no handler registered. But 
wouldn't it make sense to allow it if the default handler is registered?

4) In an earlier message you said that the Signal object is a capability, so the 
security check is on getting a reference. It seems to me that setting a handler 
is in a different category from raising a signal; this suggests to me that using 
the same object as a capability for both should be rethought.

5) I don't understand the asymmetry between register() and unregister(). Your 
earlier exchanges with Chris and with Gerard touched on this, specifically, the 
requirement that the caller pass unregister() a reference to the old handler in 
order for unregistration to work. You had said this was safer, if there are 
uncoordinated pieces of code attempting to set/unset signal handlers.

It looks to me like this API is really about maintaining process global state 
consisting of a single handler -- user-specified or default -- for each 
supported signal. (I agree that it shouldn't try to have a stack or a chain of 
handlers.) There are a few other things that are global like this, such as the 
security manager and policy, System.setIn/Out/Err, and so forth. As such, 
uncoordinated access to the signal API is pretty much broken no matter what. 
Thus I don't think it makes sense to have a CAS-like protocol for unregistering 
a handler, to protect against the case where "somebody else" might have 
registered a handler different from yours.

Something like this might make sense:

     void register(Consumer<Signal> handler);
     void unregister();

The register() call would be pretty much as currently specified; the 
unregister() call would restore the default handler. Alternatively, 
register(null) could be used instead of unregister(), but this is quite minor.

Thanks,

s'marks





On 2/1/16 8:02 AM, Roger Riggs wrote:
> Please review an API addition to handle signals such as SIGINT, SIGHUP, and
> SIGTERM.
> This JEP 260 motivated alternative to sun.misc.Signal supports the use case for
> interactive applications that need to handle Control-C and other signals.
>
> The new java.util.Signal class provides a settable primary signal handler and a
> default
> signal handler.  The primary signal handler can be unregistered and handling is
> restored
> to the default signal handler.  System initialization registers default signal
> handlers
> to terminate on SIGINT, SIGHUP, and SIGTERM.  Use of the Signal API requires
> a permission if a SecurityManager is set.
>
> The sun.misc.Signal implementation is modified to be layered on a common
> thread and dispatch mechanism. The VM handling of native signals is not affected.
> The command option to reduce signal use by the runtime with -Xrs is unmodified.
>
> The changes to hotspot are minimal to rename the hardcoded callback to the Java
> Signal dispatcher.
>
> Please review and comment on the API and implementation.
>
> javadoc:
>    http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~rriggs/signal-doc/
>
> Webrev:
> jdk:  http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~rriggs/webrev-signal-8087286/
> hotspot: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~rriggs/webrev-hs-signal-8087286/
>
> Issue:
>     https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8087286
>
> JEP 260:
>    https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8132928
>
> Thanks, Roger
>
>



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