Moving beyond fork() + exec()
4 hours ago
- #Linux Kernel
- #System Calls
- #Process Creation
- Linux currently relies on fork() and exec() for process creation, but this model is inefficient due to high costs from copying process state.
- A proposal for 'spawn templates' aimed to optimize repeated executions of the same program by caching executable data, but faced criticism for not addressing the fork() overhead.
- Reviewers suggested a new approach: create an empty process using pidfd_open() and configure it via pidfd_config(), aligning with posix_spawn() for a native, efficient alternative to fork()/exec().