It’s not atomic, writing files is almost never atomic, in POSIX what you’re supposed to do is write a temporary file and then swap out the old file and replace it with your temporary file.
This is because the write is almost always not atomic, but the rename() OS function is.
And then you’re meant to send a SIGHUP to the reading process because files are not file names and so it will keep observing the old version otherwise.
First thing anyone will notice is blazing fast pkg_add :)
Or how slow it was before, making thousands of unnecessary HTTP requests.
At last, it’s fixed, with a simple package database bundled into the quirks file.
So is it now atomic or not? 😋
“What’s an atom?”
“It comes from the Greek atomos, meaning ‘unsplittable.’”
“Can we split them?”
“Oh yeah.”
It’s not atomic, writing files is almost never atomic, in POSIX what you’re supposed to do is write a temporary file and then swap out the old file and replace it with your temporary file.
This is because the write is almost always not atomic, but the
rename()OS function is.And then you’re meant to send a SIGHUP to the reading process because files are not file names and so it will keep observing the old version otherwise.