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From: renglish@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Robert English)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: vfork (was Re: Paging page tables)
Message-ID: <3830013@hpcupt1.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Jul 90 23:37:25 GMT
References: <5830@titcce.cc.titech.ac.jp>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 15

> / barry@tredysvr.Tredydev.Unisys.COM (Barry Traylor) /  6:32 pm  Jul 13 1990 /

> At this point, coming to any sort of agreement on how to define a task
> object, and how to manipulate it in such a way as to emulate the
> possibilities of fork()/exec[ve](), would be pretty close to impossible.

On the other hand, the number of operations that fork and exec actually
need in order to support important paths through the shells and some
selected library calls is not nearly so difficult.  Adding a run/spawn
system call to improve efficiency does not require eliminating all
existing fork-exec code, and it does not require that all possible
fork-exec semantics be supported by the new call.

--bob--
renglish@hplabs.hp.com