[Monotone-devel] race condition on mtn automate stdio startup

[Stephen Leake]

I've just run across a race condition in mtn automate stdio.

During the startup of the command, it checks for various error
conditions, such as having a database specified. This can fail if the
user is not actually in a workspace:

bash-3.00$ mtn automate stdio
mtn: misuse: no database specified

On the other hand, if there are no errors, there is no output; the
process is waiting for the next user command:

bash-3.00$ cd gpm
bash-3.00$ mtn automate stdio

(killed with C-c)

This is race condition; my Emacs front-end has to wait for "a while"
to tell if the mtn process got started ok, before sending the first
command.

I have not looked into possible fixes for this. Perhaps with the new
out-of-band facility, there could be a "ready for first command"
message at startup?

-- 
-- Stephe