xread, xwrite: limit size of IO to 8MB

Checking out 2GB or more through an external filter (see test) fails
on Mac OS X 10.8.4 (12E55) for a 64-bit executable with:

    error: read from external filter cat failed
    error: cannot feed the input to external filter cat
    error: cat died of signal 13
    error: external filter cat failed 141
    error: external filter cat failed

The reason is that read() immediately returns with EINVAL when asked
to read more than 2GB.  According to POSIX [1], if the value of
nbyte passed to read() is greater than SSIZE_MAX, the result is
implementation-defined.  The write function has the same restriction
[2].  Since OS X still supports running 32-bit executables, the
32-bit limit (SSIZE_MAX = INT_MAX = 2GB - 1) seems to be also
imposed on 64-bit executables under certain conditions.  For write,
the problem has been addressed earlier [6c642a].

Address the problem for read() and write() differently, by limiting
size of IO chunks unconditionally on all platforms in xread() and
xwrite().  Large chunks only cause problems, like causing latencies
when killing the process, even if OS X was not buggy.  Doing IO in
reasonably sized smaller chunks should have no negative impact on
performance.

The compat wrapper clipped_write() introduced earlier [6c642a] is
not needed anymore.  It will be reverted in a separate commit.  The
new test catches read and write problems.

Note that 'git add' exits with 0 even if it prints filtering errors
to stderr.  The test, therefore, checks stderr.  'git add' should
probably be changed (sometime in another commit) to exit with
nonzero if filtering fails.  The test could then be changed to use
test_must_fail.

Thanks to the following people for suggestions and testing:

    Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
    John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>
    Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
    Kyle J. McKay <mackyle@gmail.com>
    Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    Torsten Bögershausen <tboegi@web.de>

[1] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/read.html
[2] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/write.html

[6c642a] commit 6c642a878688adf46b226903858b53e2d31ac5c3
    compate/clipped-write.c: large write(2) fails on Mac OS X/XNU

Signed-off-by: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/wrapper.c b/wrapper.c
index 6a015de5f0..f92b147598 100644
--- a/wrapper.c
+++ b/wrapper.c
@@ -131,6 +131,14 @@ void *xcalloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size)
 }
 
 /*
+ * Limit size of IO chunks, because huge chunks only cause pain.  OS X
+ * 64-bit is buggy, returning EINVAL if len >= INT_MAX; and even in
+ * the absense of bugs, large chunks can result in bad latencies when
+ * you decide to kill the process.
+ */
+#define MAX_IO_SIZE (8*1024*1024)
+
+/*
  * xread() is the same a read(), but it automatically restarts read()
  * operations with a recoverable error (EAGAIN and EINTR). xread()
  * DOES NOT GUARANTEE that "len" bytes is read even if the data is available.
@@ -138,6 +146,8 @@ void *xcalloc(size_t nmemb, size_t size)
 ssize_t xread(int fd, void *buf, size_t len)
 {
 	ssize_t nr;
+	if (len > MAX_IO_SIZE)
+	    len = MAX_IO_SIZE;
 	while (1) {
 		nr = read(fd, buf, len);
 		if ((nr < 0) && (errno == EAGAIN || errno == EINTR))
@@ -154,6 +164,8 @@ ssize_t xread(int fd, void *buf, size_t len)
 ssize_t xwrite(int fd, const void *buf, size_t len)
 {
 	ssize_t nr;
+	if (len > MAX_IO_SIZE)
+	    len = MAX_IO_SIZE;
 	while (1) {
 		nr = write(fd, buf, len);
 		if ((nr < 0) && (errno == EAGAIN || errno == EINTR))