Issue #19473 has been updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze). Right, like I mentioned above. But the deadlock might not happen (or even cannot happen for some cases I mentioned above), and then CRuby fails needlessly. If the deadlock does happen, then we would get this error: `deadlock; recursive locking (ThreadError)`. Which means the program doesn't hang and there is a stacktrace and it shows relevant information which is useful to fix it. So I think it is just a mistake to fail early with `can't be called from trap context (ThreadError)`. In fact CRuby even cheats this rule for IO I saw. There are fully correct use cases for using a Mutex inside `trap` as I mentioned in the description. ---------------------------------------- Bug #19473: can't be called from trap context (ThreadError) is too limiting https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19473#change-102358 * Author: Eregon (Benoit Daloze) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal * ruby -v: ruby 3.2.1 (2023-02-08 revision 31819e82c8) [x86_64-linux] * Backport: 2.7: UNKNOWN, 3.0: UNKNOWN, 3.1: UNKNOWN, 3.2: UNKNOWN ---------------------------------------- Simple reproducer: ``` $ ruby -ve 'm=Mutex.new; trap(:HUP) { m.synchronize { p :OK } }; Process.kill :HUP, Process.pid; sleep 0.1' ruby 3.2.1 (2023-02-08 revision 31819e82c8) [x86_64-linux] -e:1:in `synchronize': can't be called from trap context (ThreadError) from -e:1:in `block in <main>' from -e:1:in `kill' from -e:1:in `<main>' ``` Expected behavior: ``` $ ruby -ve 'm=Mutex.new; trap(:HUP) { m.synchronize { p :OK } }; Process.kill :HUP, Process.pid; sleep 0.1' truffleruby 22.3.1, like ruby 3.0.3, GraalVM CE Native [x86_64-linux] :OK $ ruby -ve 'm=Mutex.new; trap(:HUP) { m.synchronize { p :OK } }; Process.kill :HUP, Process.pid; sleep 0.1' jruby 9.4.0.0 (3.1.0) 2022-11-23 95c0ec159f OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 17.0.6+10 on 17.0.6+10 +jit [x86_64-linux] :OK ``` This exception is highly problematic, for instance it breaks `Timeout.timeout` in `trap`: https://github.com/ruby/timeout/issues/17#issuecomment-1142035939 I suppose this behavior is because *sometimes* it's problematic to lock a Mutex in trap, e.g., if it's already locked by the main thread/fiber. But that would otherwise already raise `deadlock; recursive locking (ThreadError)`, so there is no point to fail early. And that's just one case, not all, so we should not always raise an exception. There seems to be no valid reason to prevent *all* `Mutex#synchronize` in `trap`. After all, if the Mutex for instance is only used in `trap`, it's well-defined AFAIK. For instance a given trap handler does not seem executed concurrently: ``` $ ruby -ve 'trap(:HUP) { puts "in trap\n"+caller.join("\n")+"\n\n"; sleep 0.1 }; pid = Process.pid; Process.wait fork { 20.times { Process.kill :HUP, pid } }; sleep 1' ruby 3.2.1 (2023-02-08 revision 31819e82c8) [x86_64-linux] in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' in trap -e:1:in `wait' -e:1:in `<main>' ``` And if the trap handler using the Mutex is never called while the Mutex is held by the main thread/fiber, there is also no problem. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/