[PATCH] abort: Only flush file-based stdio streams before termination

[Florian Weimer]

On 08/17/2017 05:31 PM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

> I'm OK with this change if we clearly document what we're doing in the
> glibc manual, and explain the alternative solution of flushing from the
> abort handler.

The manual currently does not list abort as an action which flushes any
buffers:

<http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Flushing-Buffers.html>

I think you are making up an implementation constraint which does not
actually exist.

What I'm trying to do is to get rid of the flushing (to get a cleaner
process termination sequence) while preserving the legacy behavior that
stdout/stderr and other file buffers are flushed on termination because
that's easily user-visible.  Considering that flushing streams which are
not file-backed can allocate memory using malloc and that abort can be
called from all kinds of contexts (including malloc itself), I think
that's a reasonable precaution.

Thanks,
Florian