Re: EXEC_BACKEND

On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:53 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com> writes:
> > We keep talking about EXEC_BACKEND mode, though until recently I had
> > misunderstood what that meant. I also realised that I have more than
> > once neglected to take it into account when writing a patch - one recent
> > patch failed to do this.
>
> > I can't find anything coherent in docs/readme/comments to explain why it
> > exists and what its implications are.
>
> It exists because Windows doesn't have fork(), only the equivalent of
> fork-and-exec. Which means that no state variables will be inherited
> from the postmaster by its child processes, and any state that needs to
> be carried across has to be handled explicitly. You can define
> EXEC_BACKEND in a non-Windows build, for the purpose of testing code
> to see if it works in that environment.

OK, if its that simple then I see why its not documented. Thanks. I
thought there might be more to it than that.

--
Simon Riggs www.2ndQuadrant.com
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