Fork is a word English meaning “Fourche”, “Fourchette”. It comes from the Latin word furca (which is also at the origin of several words in French like junction), via the Normo-Picardy forque . It is often in this illustrated direction “of junction”, of “differentiation” which is employed this Anglicism in data processing. It thus indicates an object (in the broad sense, that can be a project) having a common root with a second. These two twin objects at the beginning after being itself separate follow a clean, different evolution.

This word can also be employed like synonym of derived object.

Function fork in UNIX

The function fork belongs to the calls system standards of UNIX.

This function makes it possible a process (a program in the course of execution) to be duplicated, for example in order to carry out a second treatment, parallel to the first.

There exists a filiation in the processes: the creator of a new process is called the father and the new process, the son. All the attributes systems of the father (for example rights on the filing system) are transmitted to the son, in the same manner as the heritage.

It is often advantageous to replace the forks, expensive in resources system (because a fork implies the creation of a new process), by light Processus S.

The function fork is used much in the customer-server applications with several simultaneous customers.

Junction of a computing project

Sometimes named fork . The sometimes criticized use, advisedly, of the Anglicism fork in the context of computing project is a picturesque use of the word fork used in programming: one creates a new project from an other with identical, without destroying this one. This implies that the rights granted by the authors allow it: they must authorize the modification, the use and the redistribution of the source code. It is for that the junctions occur easily in the field of the free software. They are perceived by certain like a sword of Damocles to the top of the least good project executors, and also like a method to prevent the appropriation of a project by a group. The “  fear of the embranchement  ” is one of the essential mechanisms of regulation and selection of the projects of the free software. The effects are not pain-killers because the available resources in terms of developers ready to contribute in particular are reduced.

An illustration of the regulation of the free projects by this means is the appearance from at least 3 forks to the project SourceForge at the conclusion of the “drift of sourceforge”:

• gforge (see the article: Gforge)
• Debian SF
• savannah (see the article: GNU Savannah)
• and others which are not maintained any more

Known junctions

• GNU Emacs, following differences of point of view between project GNU (which was at the origin of this version of Emacs) and of developers external (mainly of the company Lucid which developed a product using GNU Emacs), GNU Emacs and Lucid Emacs gives (which is then famous in XEmacs).
• In 1997, GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) stagnates and fork EGCS appears to progress more quickly, in particular in the support of the C++ standard. Finally, branch EGCS supplants the stagnant branch of GCC in 1999.
• In 2003, a fork of the free software of vectorial drawing Sodipodi, named Inkscape is launched. Today, Sodipodi did not leave new versions since February 2004 whereas Inkscape experiences a very active development. To note that Sodipodi was already in the beginning a fork free software Gill.
• In 2004, following a dissension of license, a good number of developers of XFree86 decide to create X.Org starting from XFree86 4.4 RC2. Very quickly, X.Org replaces XFree86 in the majority of the Distributions Linux.

Other meanings

• South Fork is the name of the Ranch of the Ewing family in the Feuilleton televised Dallas .

• Fork is the name of a fate of interruption of the card deck to play and collect Magic: the assembly; once played, it duplicates with identical ritual or another fast effect.

See too

• Fork bomb

• Jamie Zawinski

External bonds

• the fork Emacs according to the team of XEmacs

• the fork Emacs according to Jamie Zawinski, of Lucid