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`open` is not as side effect free as I had imagined - i.e. if the flag `O_TRUNC` is passed it truncates the file contents alongside opening the file descriptor. In practice this is done by _emacs_ prior to writing the new file content and as such needs to be intercepted so we can start tracking the file before it is changed.
Interposing `open` required some changes to make the library work without including `fcntl.h`. This header not only defines some of the flags we require to check if a library call actually is able to change files but also defines the `open` library function.
While implementing this change I noticed that the function interpositions implemented in C++ actually need to be declared as `external "C"` so their names do not get wrangled during compilation. I suspect that this was previously implicitly done for e.g. `mmap` and `write` by the included C standard library headers. However this did not work for `open` which is why all function interpositions are now explicitly declared external.
End result: _emacs_ file changes are now tracked correctly.
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The previous interposition logic based on plain usage of `dlsym` analogously to various online examples led to a deadlock during _neovim_ startup. This deadlock was caused by _neovim_'s custom memory allocation library _jemalloc_ because it calls `mmap` during its initialization phase. The problem with calling `mmap` during initialization is that this already leads to executing `libChangeLog`'s `mmap` version whoes static `actual_mmap` function pointer is not initialized at this point in time. This is detected and leads to a call to `dlsym` to remedy this situation. Sadly `dlsym` in turn requires memory allocation using `calloc` which leads us back to initializing _jemalloc_ and as such to a deadlock.
I first saw this as a bug in _jemalloc_ which seemed to be confirmed by a short search in my search engine of choice. This prompted me to create an appropriate [bug report](https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc/issues/329) which was dismissed as a problem in the way `mmap` was interposed and not as a bug in the library. Thus it seems to be accepted practice that it is not the responsibility of a custom memory allocator to cater to the initialization needs of other libraries relying on function interposition. This is of course a valid position as the whole issue is a kind of _chicken and egg_ problem where both sides can be argued.
To cut to the chase I was left with the only option of working around this deadlock by adapting `libChangeLog` to call `dlsym` without relying on the wrapped application's memory allocator of choice. The most straight forward way to do this is to provide another custom memory allocator alongside the _payload_ function interpositions of `mmap` and friends.
`init/alloc.cc` implements such a selectively transparent memory allocator that offers a small static buffer for usage in the context of executing `dlsym`.The choice between forwarding memory allocation requests to the wrapped application's allocator and using the static buffer is governed by `init::dlsymContext`. This tiny helper class maintains an `dlsym_level` counter by posing as a scope guard.
The end result of this extension to `libChangeLog` is that it now also works with applications using _jemalloc_ such as _neovim_ and should overall be much more robust during its initialization phase.
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The previous approach of storing them in static variables of the `actual` namespace and initializing them statically did not work out as it is not guaranteed that they are initialized before any interposed function is called.
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