#2270 MSYS/popen/vfork broken --

[aabatpurdue]

When using a combination of 'open("/dev/windows","r")' and 'popen()' (in that order), the system aborts. I traced it to the use of 'vfork()' in 'popen()'. If the 'vfork()' call is converted to a 'fork()' call, everything seems to execute properly. The attachment contains (I hope) the requested info that goes with a bug report plus a test case illustrating both the successful completion and the abort. I have been in communication with Thomas Wolff and he agrees that the problem appears to be a system bug. I would be glad to supply any additional information if it is needed.

Note that the problem was initially encountered in a patch for 'mintty' and that there it gave a good approximation of an infinite loop in 'ntdll.dll'. In 'mintty', I temporarily closed "/dev/windows" prior to the 'popen()' call but the problem persisted leading me to suspect that the culprit might be any current Windows interface (which 'mintty' has).

-- Thanks