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Using LMDB safely with fork() and exec()

Hello List,

The LMDB documentation says the following in its section on caveats:

> * Use an MDB_env* in the process which opened it, without fork()ing.
> * Do not have open an LMDB database twice in the same process at the same time. Not even from a plain open() call - close()ing it breaks flock() advisory locking.

This seems contrary to an earlier thread on this list (1), which
suggests that fork/execing a process using LMDB is OK so long as the
MDB_env is not used in the forked process. Looking at the flock man
pages on FreeBSD and Linux tells me that this indeed should be ok: an
flock is released only when all fds pointing to the open file table
entry are closed (ignoring explicit unlock). Exec with FD_CLOEXEC set
should therefore be OK.

Is my interpretation correct? I want to use this to implement graceful
restarts in a daemon which uses LMDB:

* mdb_env_open() in old process
* fork() -> exec() the daemon itself
* mdb_env_open() in new process
* mdb_env_close() in old process

If this works, I'd like to contribute the changes necessary to not
leak fds on exec, which are mentioned in the other thread.

* Are there contribution guidelines somewhere? How do I submit a patch?
* Seems like there is currently no call to SetHandleInformation with
HANDLE_FLAG_INHERIT=0 for Winows, should that be added?

Best,
Lorenz

1: http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-technical/201403/msg00149.html