@ai-ecoverse/slicc-kernel 1.94.1 → 1.94.3

package/README.md

@@ -499,6 +499,7 @@ Directories are renamed with `FileSystemHandle.move()` where available, else by
 - **Capabilities:** `readonly`, `symlinks`, `links` (hard links: the driver answers `link(from, to)`, reports `nlink` in its attributes, and gives every attribute a stable `ino`, the same for all names of a file; a mount whose driver offers `links` but answers an attribute without `ino` loses them: `link` is `EPERM` there and `st_nlink` is 1), `chmod`, `owners`, `ranges`, `maxIo` (the largest read or write per message), `maxFile`, `listingStats`, `sessions`, `linkTimes`, and `attrTtl`/`entryTtl` (in ms, default 1000). `sessions` promises that a handle opened for writing keeps its writes to itself until it is released, so the kernel keeps one open per file being written instead of one per write (the `fsa` driver has it). `linkTimes` promises that `setattr` with `mtime` on a symlink sets the link's own time. Without it, setting a link's own times (`touch -h`, `utimensat` with `AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW`) fails with `EOPNOTSUPP` and never reaches the target. tmpfs has it; hostfs does not. Setting times through a link follows it in the kernel, so `setattr` gets the target. `ranges` (driver protocol 1.1) promises that a write lands in the file at once, with no copy of the whole file on `open` or `release`, and that `setattr` takes `size`. `owners` (driver protocol 1.2) promises that the driver stores owners: its attributes carry `uid` and `gid`, `open` with `create`, `mkdir` and `symlink` may carry the new path's `uid`, `gid` and `mode` (the `owner` of the open flags, the second or third handler argument), a new path without them takes its directory's owner, and `setattr` takes `uid` and `gid`. tmpfs has it.
 - **Caching:** the kernel caches attributes and listings for those TTLs, and a driver can push `invalidate` for changes made outside.
 - **File contents:** on a mount with `ranges`, as `tmpfs` is, and on the root file system when it is in OPFS (in a browser with sync access handles) or an in-memory root, a program reads and writes a file in 64 KiB pages: reads come from the driver 1 MiB at a time, and changed pages go back in 1 MiB runs once 8 MiB have changed, at `fsync`, and when the file is closed (from the kernel's own descriptors also 250 ms after a write). A file of any size the mount can hold works, with memory to spare for about one more copy of it. In OPFS a write opens a sync access handle for just that write. An `fsa` mount (a picked folder) has no sync access handles, and Chrome copies the whole file into a swap file for every writable stream, so it writes through one stream per open file: the first write back opens it, later runs go into it at their offsets, and it is committed, one copy of the file, when the last process writing the file closes it (or exits), before another process reads what was written, and before a rename, unlink or unmount. Until then other processes see the new size but read the old bytes outside what was written. Elsewhere (`hostfs` with an older proxy, and a root outside OPFS), file contents are read whole when a program opens a file and written back when it closes it. Before a program's next call into the kernel (any wait, read of a pipe or terminal, sleep or spawn), its changed pages also go back, so other processes and the embedder see a write as soon as the writer does anything but compute: a daemon's pidfile, a log another process follows. On a whole-file mount that holds only for files of up to 64 KiB; a larger one goes back at close, fsync and exit, as before. Beyond that, both give close-to-open consistency, as NFS has. A process that ends without closing its files keeps what it wrote: on exit, on a trap, and when a signal kills it. For a killed WASI program, the kernel lets its worker write its changed pages back before `waitpid` reports the death. The only exception is a worker that makes no call into the kernel for 2 seconds after the signal; it is stopped without that write-back.
+- **One file, several processes** ([#665](https://github.com/ai-ecoverse/slicc-kernel/issues/665)): a process that keeps a file open sees what another process writes to it. Every change the kernel applies to a file (a write back, a truncate, an append, a rename or a removal) bumps a change ring the kernel shares with all its processes. Before each read, write or seek to the end, a process's open file checks the ring (one atomic load) and, if its file changed, drops its clean pages and reads the size again, keeping its own unwritten changes. A write by one process is visible to another one's next read once it has gone back to the kernel: at the latest at the writer's next `fsync`, close, exit or call into the kernel (see above), so sqlite, which `fsync`s every commit, sees another connection's commit at its next transaction. A write through a file the kernel holds (a JS program's `ctx.open`, a WASI program's file after a fork or spawn) is in the kernel already, so other processes see it at their next read, before it is written back. A file the kernel itself holds open (a JS program's file, a WASI program's file after a fork or spawn) is the one copy: reads, writes, truncates and appends by path from other processes go to it, and their writes go through to storage at once, so a commit is in storage (and in `kernel.readFile`) when the committing process returns from `fsync`. `O_APPEND` writes go to the kernel at once, and the kernel picks the offset, so appenders in several processes keep every line. A file system without ranged I/O (`hostfs` with an older proxy, a root outside OPFS) rereads a file another process changed, but writes it back whole, so two writers there still need locks. Limits for now: the same file under two names (a symlink in the path, a hard link, an alias on a mount without `realpath`) isn't kept coherent yet, so processes sharing a file should name it by the same path ([#669](https://github.com/ai-ecoverse/slicc-kernel/issues/669)); another tab's writes reach this tab's processes only as far as the root's change notifications (OPFS's `BroadcastChannel` watch) carry them; and byte-range locks (`fcntl` `F_SETLK`) are not enforced between processes yet (they come with the next change).
 - **Rules on a mount:**
   - a rename across mounts is `EXDEV`, so `mv` copies;
   - a symlink on the root file system that leads onto a mount, such as `~/proj` → `/mnt/drive/proj`, or a chain from a mount to the root and back, is followed onto the mount by every operation, in every runtime: reads, writes, `stat`, listings, `mkdir`, removals, renames, `chmod`, `chown` and times. Removing the link itself removes the link. Before [#547](https://github.com/ai-ecoverse/slicc-kernel/issues/547) was fixed, the kernel resolved such a link against the directory under the mount point for JS and WASI programs, the embedder's `fs` and attached clients (Emscripten programs weren't affected): reads failed with `ENOENT`, and writes went into that hidden directory, which shows again once the mount is gone;