[Seems like a plausible idea.

If we do a multithreaded server, may need a change in meaning, but as
long as we pass something which identifies the connection, that would
be doable.

Also would need to think about how to handle non-unix operating
systems.

Of course, should use execve instead of putenv, would need a testcase,
needs documentation, maybe one or two other things like that (if it is
thought to be a good enough idea to consider making it official, that
is).

-kingdon]

From: Andreas Luik <luik@isa.de>
Subject: cvs-1.9: change-request: pass cvs pid to called scripts
To: bug-cvs@gnu.org
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 21:34:43 +0200 (MET DST)
X-Organization: ISA Systems GmbH, Azenbergstr. 35, D-70174 Stuttgart

Hi,

this is not really a bug report, but a change request to implement
a mechanism to pass the ID of the cvs process to the different scripts
like loginfo and so on.

Background information: we have a set of scripts which perform some
actions requiring some locking. We decided to use the (hostname, pid)
pair of the cvs process, but it is rather awksome to determine the
process id of cvs by computing the PPID, because for example in
editinfo, cvs is the parent process, whereas the loginfo script is
called via /bin/sh, so cvs is the parent of the parent of loginfo.

It would be much easier, if cvs would set a CVSPID environment
variable, for example (patch added at end of mail).

Can you please consider this enhancement and perhaps send a comment
back.

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Andreas Luik         E-Mail: luik@isa.de
(postmaster@isa.de)  WWW:    http://www.isa.de/~luik
                     PGP:    E2 6A 41 70 67 1E 0B 68  94 0D 9E 83 95 16 AF 59

*** cvs-1.9/src/main.c.ORIG	Wed Oct  2 08:04:02 1996
--- cvs-1.9/src/main.c	Wed Aug 12 18:32:01 1998
***************
*** 344,349 ****
--- 344,364 ----
      program_name = last_component (argv[0]);
  #endif
  
+ #ifdef HAVE_PUTENV
+     /* Set the CVSPID environment variable. */
+     {
+ 	char *env;
+ 	pid_t pid;		/* assume pid < 10**20 */
+ 
+ 	if ((pid = getpid()) != (pid_t) -1) {
+ 	    env = xmalloc (strlen (CVSPID_ENV) + 20 + 1 + 1);
+ 	    (void) sprintf (env, "%s=%lu", CVSPID_ENV, (unsigned long) pid);
+ 	    (void) putenv (env);
+ 	    /* do not free env, as putenv has control of it */
+ 	}
+     }
+ #endif
+ 
      /*
       * Query the environment variables up-front, so that
       * they can be overridden by command line arguments
*** cvs-1.9/src/cvs.h.ORIG	Wed Oct  2 08:03:59 1996
--- cvs-1.9/src/cvs.h	Wed Aug 12 18:32:02 1998
***************
*** 226,231 ****
--- 226,233 ----
  #define	TAG_BASE	"BASE"
  
  /* Environment variable used by CVS */
+ #define	CVSPID_ENV	"CVSPID"	/* the process ID of cvs */
+ 
  #define	CVSREAD_ENV	"CVSREAD"	/* make files read-only */
  #define	CVSREAD_DFLT	FALSE		/* writable files by default */