[PATCH] test/emacs: replace the use of process-attributes with kill(1)

Subject: [PATCH] test/emacs: replace the use of process-attributes with kill(1)

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:36:18 -0400

To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org

Cc:

From: David Bremner

In some environments (at least Hurd), process-attributes is
unimplimented and always returns nil.  This ends up causing test
failures (see e.g. id:87a9ffofsc.fsf@zancas.localnet).

According to POSIX 1003.1-2001, a signal of 0 can be used to check the
validity of a pid. This seems less heinous than parsing the output of ps(1).
---

I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile, but a point release could
finally get notmuch compiling on Hurd again.  At least the test in the parent message does pass on Hurd with this patch

 test/test-lib.el | 15 +++++++++------
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/test/test-lib.el b/test/test-lib.el
index d26b49f..93f5f72 100644
--- a/test/test-lib.el
+++ b/test/test-lib.el
@@ -77,19 +77,22 @@ invisible text."
 	(setq start next-pos)))
     str))
 
+;; process-attributes is not defined everywhere, so define an
+;; alternate way to test if a process still exists.
+
+(defun test-process-running (pid)
+  (= 0
+   (call-process "kill" nil nil nil "-0" (int-to-string pid))))
+
 (defun orphan-watchdog-check (pid)
   "Periodically check that the process with id PID is still
 running, quit if it terminated."
-  (if (not (process-attributes pid))
+  (if (not (test-process-running pid))
       (kill-emacs)))
 
 (defun orphan-watchdog (pid)
   "Initiate orphan watchdog check."
-  ; If process-attributes returns nil right away, that probably means
-  ; it is unimplimented. So we delay two minutes before killing emacs.
-  (if (process-attributes pid)
-      (run-at-time 60 60 'orphan-watchdog-check pid)
-    (run-at-time 120 60 'orphan-watchdog-check pid)))
+  (run-at-time 60 60 'orphan-watchdog-check pid))
 
 (defun hook-counter (hook)
   "Count how many times a hook is called.  Increments
-- 
1.8.5.2

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