[racket-dev] the preferences file under Windows

Two minutes ago, Matthew Flatt wrote:
> At Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:29:15 -0500, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> > 30 minutes ago, Matthew Flatt wrote:
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately (again), the lock file has to exist alongside the
> > > data file, and our existing preferences files are not
> > > accompanied by lock files. It's no good assuming that you don't
> > > need the lock if there's no lock file present, because the lock
> > > file might get created in between the time that you try to use
> > > the lock file and the time that you try to open the preferences
> > > file.
> > 
> > Why not always use such a lock file, creating it if it's not there
> > -- and then you can open it once per process, and lock/unlock it
> > for each read/write of the actual file.  Does this fail somehow?
> 
> That's a good idea. It's a little bit of option 1, in that a reader
> will sometimes need to write a file --- but only in the transitional
> case of dealing with an existing preference file without a lock
> file.

Yeah...  If it wasn't for the "transition", it would have already been
there (created when the prefs file is created).

(Another point is where the lock file is located, like putting it in
some /dev/shm-like place so the file itself becomes just a way to name
a kernel lock.  I think that I've seen that discussed in some linux
context, with a similar sounding locking scheme (where you open the
file and then lock it).)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!