SIGINT handling differences between bash 3 and 4

Question

I have a script which works great in bash 4.3, but gives me unexpected behavior with bash 3.2. Here's a simplified version:

set -o errexit -o pipefail

task() {
    local name=${1}
    local duration=${2}
    trap 'echo "[${SECONDS} secs] ${name}: SIGINT"; exit 255' INT
    echo "[${SECONDS} secs] ${name}: Running"
    sleep "${duration}"
    echo "[${SECONDS} secs] ${name}: Done"
}

trap 'echo "[${SECONDS} secs] SIGINT"; exit 255' INT
task 'Task 1' 5 &
task 'Task 2' 5 &
wait
echo "[${SECONDS} secs] Done"

Here's the output when run with bash 4.3 (4.3.42(1)-release) after CTRL-C'ing two seconds into it:

[0 secs] Task 1: Running
[0 secs] Task 2: Running
^C[2 secs] SIGINT
[2 secs] Task 2: SIGINT
[2 secs] Task 1: SIGINT
prompt>

Same thing but with bash 3.2 (3.2.57(1)-release):

[0 secs] Task 1: Running
[0 secs] Task 2: Running
^C[2 secs] SIGINT
prompt> [5 secs] Task 2: Done
[5 secs] Task 1: Done

Are there known issues preventing the above script from working correctly under bash 3.2? Do workarounds exist?

Here are a few things I've tried:

• No signal handler in the parent:

  # bash 4.3
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C[2 secs] Task 2: SIGINT
  [2 secs] Task 1: SIGINT
  prompt>
  
  # bash 3.2
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C
  prompt> [5 secs] Task 2: Done
  [5 secs] Task 1: Done
  

• No signal handlers at all:

  # bash 4.3
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C
  prompt>
  
  # bash 3.2
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C
  prompt> [5 secs] Task 2: Done
  [5 secs] Task 1: Done
  

• Signal handler in parent that kills the process group with SIGINT (kill -INT -- -$$):

  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C[2 secs] SIGINT
  [2 secs] Task 2: SIGINT
  [2 secs] Task 1: SIGINT
  prompt>
  
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C[2 secs] SIGINT
  prompt> [5 secs] Task 2: Done
  [5 secs] Task 1: Done
  

• Signal handler in parent that kill the process group with SIGTERM (tasks trap SIGTERM):

  # bash 4.3
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C[2 secs] SIGINT
  [2]    92813 terminated  bash minimal_example.sh
  prompt>
  
  # bash 3.2
  [0 secs] Task 1: Running
  [0 secs] Task 2: Running
  ^C[2 secs] SIGINT
  Terminated: 15
  Terminated: 15
  [2 secs] Task 2: SIGTERM
  [2 secs] Task 1: SIGTERM
  [1]    92836 terminated  /bin/bash minimal_example.sh
  prompt>
  

The last is the closest to working properly in 3.2, but that same code behaves differently in 4.3.

Answer 1

It may be that you are a victim of a well known bash problem that frequently hits make users.

I did not yet check bash 4, but bash 3 incorrectly does jobcontrol inside scripts. This usually causes makefiles that contain a loop over several subdirectories not to be easily killable by ^C because the sub processes run in separate process groups even though these commands are not interactive commands.

smake includes a workaround for /bin/sh being bash and explicitely forwards SIGINT to the procress group of the currently running command. But this is software written in C.

The same cannot be implemented with usual shells in scripts as there is no standard UNIX command to retrieve the process group of a child.