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Optimize some functions in std::process #31613

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  • Be sure that read_to_end gets directed towards read_to_end_uninitialized for all handles
  • When spawning a child that guaranteed doesn't need a stdin, don't actually create a stdin pipe for that process, instead just redirect it to /dev/null
  • When calling wait_with_output, don't spawn threads to read out the pipes of the child. Instead drain all pipes on the calling thread and then wait on the process.

Functionally, it is intended that nothing changes as part of this PR

This pushes the implementation detail of proxying `read_to_end` through to
`read_to_end_uninitialized` all the way down to the `FileDesc` and `Handle`
implementations on Unix/Windows. This way intermediate layers will also be able
to take advantage of this optimized implementation.

This commit also adds the optimized implementation for `ChildStdout` and
`ChildStderr`.
For example if `Command::output` or `Command::status` is used then stdin is just
immediately closed. Add an option for this so as an optimization we can avoid
creating pipes entirely.

This should help reduce the number of active file descriptors when spawning
processes on Unix and the number of active handles on Windows.
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r? @nikomatsakis

(rust_highfive has picked a reviewer for you, use r? to override)

@alexcrichton
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As some rationale for this as well, it's always bothered me that we've spawned threads in the standard library for this (seems a bit overkill), and I've also been curious lately as to our why our build times for Windows are so much higher than Unix (on the buildbots we have). I have done basically 0 investigation into why, but I figured it can't help to try to optimize Command::output which I believe is called quite a few times during the test suite.

Semantically there's actually no reason for us to spawn threads as part of the
call to `wait_with_output`, and that's generally an incredibly heavyweight
operation for just reading a few bytes (especially when stderr probably rarely
has bytes!). An equivalent operation in terms of what's implemented today would
be to just drain both pipes of all contents and then call `wait` on the child
process itself.

On Unix we can implement this through some convenient use of the `select`
function, whereas on Windows we can make use of overlapped I/O. Note that on
Windows this requires us to use named pipes instead of anonymous pipes, but
they're semantically the same under the hood.
@alexcrichton
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well, as usual I figured I'd fully run the windows side tests after I pushed this up, but yet again it seems I have jumped the gun. Looks like there's some more pieces to disentangle there, so closing for now.

bors added a commit that referenced this pull request Mar 9, 2016
Optimize some functions in std::process

* Be sure that `read_to_end` gets directed towards `read_to_end_uninitialized` for all handles
* When spawning a child that guaranteed doesn't need a stdin, don't actually create a stdin pipe for that process, instead just redirect it to /dev/null
* When calling `wait_with_output`, don't spawn threads to read out the pipes of the child. Instead drain all pipes on the calling thread and *then* wait on the process.

Functionally, it is intended that nothing changes as part of this PR

---

Note that this was the same as #31613, and even after that it turned out that fixing Windows was easier than I thought! To copy a comment from over there:

> As some rationale for this as well, it's always bothered me that we've spawned threads in the standard library for this (seems a bit overkill), and I've also been curious lately as to our why our build times for Windows are so much higher than Unix (on the buildbots we have). I have done basically 0 investigation into why, but I figured it can't help to try to optimize Command::output which I believe is called quite a few times during the test suite.
bors added a commit that referenced this pull request Mar 10, 2016
Optimize some functions in std::process

* Be sure that `read_to_end` gets directed towards `read_to_end_uninitialized` for all handles
* When spawning a child that guaranteed doesn't need a stdin, don't actually create a stdin pipe for that process, instead just redirect it to /dev/null
* When calling `wait_with_output`, don't spawn threads to read out the pipes of the child. Instead drain all pipes on the calling thread and *then* wait on the process.

Functionally, it is intended that nothing changes as part of this PR

---

Note that this was the same as #31613, and even after that it turned out that fixing Windows was easier than I thought! To copy a comment from over there:

> As some rationale for this as well, it's always bothered me that we've spawned threads in the standard library for this (seems a bit overkill), and I've also been curious lately as to our why our build times for Windows are so much higher than Unix (on the buildbots we have). I have done basically 0 investigation into why, but I figured it can't help to try to optimize Command::output which I believe is called quite a few times during the test suite.
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3 participants