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Unix.execvpe doesn't change environment on Cygwin and maybe Windows #6903

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vicuna opened this issue Jun 14, 2015 · 9 comments
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Unix.execvpe doesn't change environment on Cygwin and maybe Windows #6903

vicuna opened this issue Jun 14, 2015 · 9 comments

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@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jun 14, 2015

Original bug ID: 6903
Reporter: adrien
Status: resolved (set by @xavierleroy on 2017-02-14T12:55:25Z)
Resolution: fixed
Priority: normal
Severity: minor
Version: 4.02.1
Target version: 4.03.1+dev
Fixed in version: 4.05.0 +dev/beta1/beta2/beta3/rc1
Category: platform support (windows, cross-compilation, etc)
Related to: #4499 #7640
Monitored by: @dbuenzli

Bug description

The following reproduces the issue:

open Unix
let env = Array.concat [ [| "LAPIN=lapin" |] ; Unix.environment () ]
let () =
match fork () with
| 0 -> execvpe "env" [| "env" |] env
| x -> ()

Run inside cygwin and pipe the output to 'grep lapin'. You should see nothing (unless you already had that environment variable defined).

The code in otherlibs/unix/execvp.c looks fine but does nothing. However, Unix.execve works. Both bindings are very old: execvpe in 1996 and execve in 1995 (this one, untouched since then).

The code for Unix.execvpe plays with the environ variable rather than calling execvpe(); I don't know why and this dates back to 1996: "Renommage unix.h -> unixsupport.h Petites adaptations pour Win32." ( ac9f8e8 / rev 951 ). One possibility is that is execvpe wasn't available back then on Windows.

As for why this doesn't work, if I remember correctly, Windows has two environments: one for ansi, one for unicode and this would require getters and setters rather than direct access to the variable.

I'm attaching a patch. I've only tested it on Cygwin and it fixes the testcase above.

I've also been a bit surprised by the following in otherslibs/threads/unix.ml (indent mine):
let execve proc args env = do_exec (fun () -> _execve proc args env)
let execvp proc args = do_exec (fun () -> _execvp proc args)
let execvpe proc args = do_exec (fun () -> _execvpe proc args)

I guess that not specifying the last argument for execvpe works because of partial application but it's a bit surprising to see it written that way.

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@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jun 14, 2015

Comment author: @gasche

Could you also add the failing case to the testsuite?

(A new directory tests/lib-unix would seem fitting)

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jun 15, 2015

Comment author: @alainfrisch

Windows has two environments

On a related note, see also #4499: libc functions don't see changes caused by native Windows calls (SetEnvironmentVariable).

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Aug 1, 2015

Comment author: nbraud

Attached patch might cause build to fail on Mac OS X.
This may be related to #5693

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Aug 3, 2015

Comment author: adrien

It was actually me asking nbraud over IRC to comment here because I wasn't home and was worried I would forget.

I just checked and, from "man execvpe" on Linux:
CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.
The execvpe() function is a GNU extension.

This has just gotten me very very sad because I believe manipulating environ in a threaded environment is racy. Well, forking in a threaded environment is racy but it's a good idea troubles as much as possible.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Nov 28, 2015

Comment author: @xavierleroy

Right, execvpe() is not POSIX, just a GNU extension. Could you please revise your patch accordingly? At a minimum, it should be

#ifdef _GNU_SOURCE
// your new code using execvpe()
#else
// the old implementation that modifies "environ"
#endif

Alternatively, you could implement execvpe in terms of execve() (which is POSIX), using caml_search_exe_in_path (from the OCaml runtime system) to find the actual location of the executable.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Dec 3, 2015

Comment author: adrien

NB: execvpe() is also available on Windows.

Musl-libc is MIT-licensed and has an implementation of execvpe on top of execve which can be seen at http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/process/execvp.c .

Would it be OK to re-use that for platforms without execvpe() and to call execvpe() directly otherwise?

I don't know if I'll be able to do something myself before the next release and I don't want to "lock" the update of the patch to myself. In any case I'll do my best to review and test any patch on the topic.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Dec 4, 2015

Comment author: @xavierleroy

No, it's not OK to reuse the Musl code, because 1- it would probably not work under Windows, and 2- the OCaml runtime already contains functions to search executables in PATH, see "caml/osdeps.h".

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 11, 2016

Comment author: adrien

Realistically I won't have time to push this forward in time for the next release: I'd like to write and test a couple patches to see and compare them but I'm too short on time for this during January and I think this issue can wait a bit more if needed.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Feb 14, 2017

Comment author: @xavierleroy

Fixed by commit [trunk 3627221], should be in 4.05.

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