Comment by aidenn0
4 years ago
IMO, fork is strictly better than threads as a tool for having operations perform off of the main thread; they get all the state they need at the beginning and they can use IPC to return the result.
TFA does allow for off-process operations, but all of the inputs to the operation would need to be passed explicitly. In this sense, I suppose TFA isn't arguing against multiprocessing per-se, but against the specific type that implicitly includes all of the current process state (which has both up- and down-sides).
> In this sense, I suppose TFA isn't arguing against multiprocessing per-se, but against the specific type that implicitly includes all of the current process state (which has both up- and down-sides).
You don't have to suppose anything, TFA specifically says that you should use posix_spawn or immediately exec() after forking.
It doesn't imply or hint, let alone say, that threads are superior, it only mentions them because they interact badly with fork() and that's the issue they'd hit. It's not like threads are the only thing which interacts badly with fork.
That is basically how NGINX works if you run it in daemon mode. When you start or reload the server, the main process initializes common state then forks to become a worker process. Although I would recommend avoiding any IPC past that if possible