#8648: Initialization of C statics broken in threaded runtime ------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: edsko | Owner: simonmar Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Runtime System | Version: 7.7 Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Type of failure: None/Unknown Difficulty: Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | ------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Consider a tiny package `static-value`, consisting of one Haskell file {{{ foreign import ccall unsafe "returnStaticValue" c_returnStaticValue :: IO CInt printStaticValue :: IO () printStaticValue = print =<< c_returnStaticValue }}} and one corresponding C file {{{ static int theStaticValue = 0; int returnStaticValue() { // Modify the static so the C compiler doesn't optimize it away return theStaticValue++; } }}} (test case is attached). If we call `printStaticValue` using the GHC API: {{{ runGhc (Just libdir) $ do flags0 <- getSessionDynFlags void $ setSessionDynFlags flags0 { hscTarget = HscInterpreted , ghcLink = LinkInMemory , ghcMode = CompManager } setContext $ [ IIDecl $ simpleImportDecl $ mkModuleName "StaticValue" ] _ <- runStmt "StaticValue.printStaticValue" RunToCompletion }}} then we see "0", as expected. However, if we compile this code using the threaded runtime, and we wrap the above code in a call to either `forkIO` or `forkOS`, then we see a different value printed (-907777, whatever that value is). Some notes: * I have been unable to reproduce this bug without using GHC as API; in particular, calling `printStaticValue` directly, wrapped in `forkIO` or `forkOS` or not, always works as expected. * If I change the initialization value of `staticValue` from 0 to anything else (say, 1234), we always get the right answer, never the uninitialized value. Presumably this is because non-zero values require some explicit code to be run (and it does get run), while a zero value gets initialized differently (and apparently, that's where the bug is). * I have reproduced this bug in both ghc 7.4 and 7.7.20131227. This ticket is the result of tracking down a problem with calling `createProcess` from within the GHC API, which would cause the parent process to stall. As it turns out, `runProcess.c` (from the `process` library) declares a `static long max_fd = 0`, and in `runInteractiveProcess` checks for this value to be 0, and if it is, does a syscall to figure out what the maximum FD is. But since this static does not get initialized properly (the bug reported in this ticket), it gets left at its (random? but always the same) value (281474975802879), so that the child process proceeds to close rather too many file descriptors (if close_fds was set to True) and the parent stalls. Indeed, changing the initialization to `static long max_fd = -1` (and adjusting the later check for zero accordingly) fixes this (so this is a viable workaround in `process` if we cannot track down the bug in GHC). -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8648 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler