Re: [RFC PATCH] waitfd: file descriptor to wait on child processes

Alan Cox
2008-12-09T17:06:03Z

> prototype for a fourth: waitfd. It pretty much does what the name
> suggests: reading from it yields a series of status ints (as would be
> written into the second argument of waitpid) for child processes that
> have changed state. It takes essentially the same arguments as waitpid
> (for now) and supports the same set of features.

This propogates the fundamental braindamage of waitpid - the fact the
notification only works on child process trees.

Here is a more elegant suggestion - use epoll, inotify and friends fully
on /proc process nodes.

Alan