libutil: Provide alternatives to startSignalHandlerThread

How signals should be handled depends on what kind of process Nix
is integrated into. The signal handler thread used by the stand-alone
Nix commands / processes may not work well in the context of other
runtime systems, such as those of Python, Perl, or Haskell.

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/libutil/util.hh b/src/libutil/util.hh
index 783a4a601..08993e1cf 100644
--- a/src/libutil/util.hh
+++ b/src/libutil/util.hh
@@ -448,6 +448,8 @@ void setStackSize(size_t stackSize);
 /**
  * Restore the original inherited Unix process context (such as signal
  * masks, stack size).
+
+ * See startSignalHandlerThread(), saveSignalMask().
  */
 void restoreProcessContext(bool restoreMounts = true);
 
@@ -817,9 +819,26 @@ class Callback;
 /**
  * Start a thread that handles various signals. Also block those signals
  * on the current thread (and thus any threads created by it).
+ * Saves the signal mask before changing the mask to block those signals.
+ * See saveSignalMask().
  */
 void startSignalHandlerThread();
 
+/**
+ * Saves the signal mask, which is the signal mask that nix will restore
+ * before creating child processes.
+ * See setChildSignalMask() to set an arbitrary signal mask instead of the
+ * current mask.
+ */
+void saveSignalMask();
+
+/**
+ * Sets the signal mask. Like saveSignalMask() but for a signal set that doesn't
+ * necessarily match the current thread's mask.
+ * See saveSignalMask() to set the saved mask to the current mask.
+ */
+void setChildSignalMask(sigset_t *sigs);
+
 struct InterruptCallback
 {
     virtual ~InterruptCallback() { };