ruby--ruby/doc/signals.rdoc

= Caveats for implementing Signal.trap callbacks

As with implementing signal handlers in C or most other languages,
all code passed to Signal.trap must be reentrant.  If you are not
familiar with reentrancy, you need to read up on it at
{Wikipedia}[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentrancy_(computing)] or
elsewhere before reading the rest of this document.

Most importantly, "thread-safety" does not guarantee reentrancy;
and methods such as Mutex#lock and Mutex#synchronize which are
commonly used for thread-safety even prevent reentrancy.

== An implementation detail of the Ruby VM

The Ruby VM defers Signal.trap callbacks from running until it is safe
for its internal data structures, but it does not know when it is safe
for data structures in YOUR code.  Ruby implements deferred signal
handling by registering short C functions with only
{async-signal-safe functions}[http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal-safety.7.html] as
signal handlers.  These short C functions only do enough tell the VM to
run callbacks registered via Signal.trap later in the main VM loop.

== Unsafe methods to call in Signal.trap blocks

When in doubt, consider anything not listed as safe below as being
unsafe.

* Mutex#lock, Mutex#synchronize and any code using them are explicitly
  unsafe.  This includes Monitor in the standard library which uses
  Mutex to provide reentrancy.

* Dir.chdir with block

* any IO write operations when IO#sync is false;
  including IO#write, IO#write_nonblock, IO#puts.
  Pipes and sockets default to `IO#sync = true', so it is safe to
  write to them unless IO#sync was disabled.

* File#flock, as the underlying flock(2) call is not specified by POSIX

== Commonly safe operations inside Signal.trap blocks

* Assignment and retrieval of local, instance, and class variables

* Most object allocations and initializations of common types
  including Array, Hash, String, Struct, Time.

* Common Array, Hash, String, Struct operations which do not execute a block
  are generally safe; but beware if iteration is occurring elsewhere.

* Hash#[], Hash#[]= (unless Hash.new was given an unsafe block)

* Thread::Queue#push and Thread::SizedQueue#push (since Ruby 2.1)

* Creating a new Thread via Thread.new/Thread.start can used to get
  around the unusability of Mutexes inside a signal handler

* Signal.trap is safe to use inside blocks passed to Signal.trap

* arithmetic on Integer and Float (`+', `-', '%', '*', '/')

  Additionally, signal handlers do not run between two successive
  local variable accesses, so shortcuts such as `+=' and `-=' will
  not trigger a data race when used on Integer and Float classes in
  signal handlers.

== System call wrapper methods which are safe inside Signal.trap

Since Ruby has wrappers around many
{async-signal-safe C functions}[http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal-safety.7.html]
the corresponding wrappers for many IO, File, Dir, and Socket methods
are safe.

(Incomplete list)

* Dir.chdir (without block arg)
* Dir.mkdir
* Dir.open
* File#truncate
* File.link
* File.open
* File.readlink
* File.rename
* File.stat
* File.symlink
* File.truncate
* File.unlink
* File.utime
* IO#close
* IO#dup
* IO#fsync
* IO#read
* IO#read_nonblock
* IO#stat
* IO#sysread
* IO#syswrite
* IO.select
* IO.pipe
* Process.clock_gettime
* Process.exit!
* Process.fork
* Process.kill
* Process.pid
* Process.ppid
* Process.waitpid
...