[erlang-questions] supervisors, gen_server:terminate/2, and trap_exit

[Fred Hebert]

On 03/11, Youngkin, Rich wrote:
> "terminate/2 will also be called when its parent (the process that spawned
> it) dies, if and only if the gen_server is trapping exits."
> 
> [...]
> 
> The Erlang documentation on Supervisors states "Note that all child
> processes implemented using the standard OTP behavior modules automatically
> adhere to the shutdown protocol.". I'm having trouble reconciling these
> LYSE with the Erlang Supervisor docs.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rich

The references I found to the shutdown protocol is:

http://www.erlang.org/documentation/doc-4.9.1/doc/design_principles/sup_princ.html#shutdown

"The supervisor process sends an exit signal to the child process and
waits for acknowledgment. The child process should handle the
{'EXIT',ParentPid,shutdown} message and terminate with reason shutdown
if it traps exit signals."

The last line here is important -- if it traps exit signals. This is in
agreement with what LYSE mentions. If you don't trap exit signals, you
can't get the signal, it just kills the process directly.

Regards,
Fred.