os,internal/poll: reads from closed pipes sometimes do not unblock on darwin

[bcmills]

#!watchflakes
post <- goos == "darwin" && log ~ `os/exec\.\(\*Cmd\)\.awaitGoroutines` && log ~ `internal/poll\.\(\*pollDesc\)\.waitRead` &&
	!(builder ~ `(gotip|go1\.\d\d)-` && date < "2024-01-18")

We have been tracking a long-running bug on macOS (darwin) in #54461 (comment). That issue title doesn't accurately capture the widespread nature of the problem, nor its defining symptom or suspected root cause; so, I am filing a new issue for it.

On macOS, we see a pattern of test failures with the following characteristics:

• A goroutine is blocked on a read operation on a pipe.
• The pipe is known to be closed, because the process on the other end has either terminated (most often) or explicitly closed the pipe (less frequent, but sometimes seen in cases like net/http/cgi: TestCopyError failures due to unexpected child process #57369).

Many of these bugs have been worked around by explicitly canceling (or adding a timeout to) the stuck read.

The issues with this symptom have included:

• x/crypto/ssh/test: TestAcceptCloseTCP failures #60099
• x/tools/gopls: regtest flakes due to hanging go commands #54461
• x/tools/gopls/internal/regtest/modfile: TestSumUpdateFixesDiagnostics failures #61073
• x/tools/gopls/internal/lsp/cmd/test: TestDefinition failures #61128

A few other issues may be related but don't (or didn't) include goroutine dumps for the stuck process: they may or may not be due to this failure mode.

• x/build/internal/task: TestTagXRepos failures #56231
• net/http/cgi: TestCopyError failures due to unexpected child process #57369
• runtime: deadlock when running concurrent builds on MacOS #59657
• os/signal: TestTerminalSignal failures with subprogram failed: exit status 1 after Waiting for exit... #61595
• os: (*Cmd).Wait hangs on macOS when setctty is used after commit b15c399a3 #61779
• x/build/internal/task: TestTagTelemetry failures #63258
• x/build/internal/task: TestTagSingleRepo failures with context deadline exceeded on darwin #63731
• x/build/internal/task: test failures with signal: killed on darwin #64110
• x/build/internal/task: TestSyncPrivate failures with context deadline exceeded on darwin #64269
• os/signal: hang in TestTerminalSignal on darwin #64700
• x/crypto/ssh/test: tests fail on macOS 14 #64959

Given the symptoms, it seems likely to me that this is either a bug in internal/poll, or a bug in the macOS platform that we have somehow started to trigger.

Note that #61779 was bisected specifically to https://go.dev/cl/420334.

[mknyszek]

In triage, we think maybe this and the darwin memory corruption issues would be a good target for our friction fixit week time. We think the next step is to attempt to reproduce the issue in C and see if we need to escalate this as a kernel bug or something.

[bcmills]

I randomly stumbled across #25696 today.

It isn't clear to me whether that is related, since it is using net pipes instead of os pipes. 🤔