Re: Gleef's comments

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Sat, 8 Aug 1998, Chris Jantzen wrote:
> Gleef writes:
>  > I do remember that I once said that a program should treat SIGINT and
>  > SIGTERM as if the user hit Exit, and treat SIGKILL quickly and
>  > non-destructively, with no user input.  Not the same thing as he's
>  > quoting, but I don't remember anyone else talking about signals at all.
> 
> A user application can't trap SIGKILL. Your program dies. Period. :-)
> If this were not so, rogue/trojan applications would be much easier to 
> write under UNIX.

Sounds reasonable.  In that case a program should (C2 or C3) be designed
so that a SIGKILL does not cause a catastrophic loss of data.  For an
example, we can use Emacs, which uses temporary save files named
"#filename#" and removes them when done.  This allows an Emacs process to
disappear, leaving the original, a backup "filename~" file (if present),
and the working "#filename#" file.

We should either require or suggest that GNOME programs follow behavior
along similar lines.  I suspect there will be too many exceptions for
requiring it to make sense, so it's probably a C3 (or whatever the level
is called today).

-Gleef