[ogulcancelik]

refs #5515

On GNOME 51 Wayland the clipboard helpers can hang. Copy-on-select then did nothing while Herdr still showed a success toast and left hung wl-copy children behind, and image paste (Ctrl+V) froze the client until the helper was killed by hand.

Linux clipboard helpers now run with a shared 5 second deadline covering stdin, stdout and exit. Success requires exit 0 (no more treating a still-running wl-copy after 100 ms as success), and helpers that fail or time out are killed and reaped, including wrapper process groups. Feedback is shown after the real dispatch result, so the existing OSC 52 fallback still reports success when it actually sends.

A normal wl-copy, which forks a background owner and exits 0, stays instant and isn't waited on. With a truly broken helper, input can pause for at most 5 seconds instead of forever. macOS and Windows are unchanged.

Reproduced with a real server, PTY client and hanging stub helpers: three hung wl-copy children and a frozen paste on master; on this branch, queued input resumes on its own and every helper is reaped. Tests cover fast, slow, hanging, forking-owner, 6 MiB round-trip and failed-wrapper cleanup cases.

just check passed on the change, including the Windows lint.

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Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 9c78741 and 7f6f8ce.

Files selected for processing: 2

• src/platform/linux/clipboard_tests.rs
• src/selection.rs

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Walkthrough

Linux clipboard reads and writes now use a shared five-second timeout and a subprocess runner with bounded output and process cleanup. Text limits, image payload limits, UTF-8 checks, and image-signature checks remain in place. Selection-copy handling queues clipboard writes without immediate feedback. The runtime displays copy feedback only after a successful write.

Possibly related issues

• Clipboard helpers hang on GNOME 51 Wayland: copy on select does nothing and image paste freezes the client #5515 — The issue reports hanging wl-copy and wl-paste helpers. This change adds deadlines and process cleanup for clipboard helpers.

Suggested reviewers: jjliebig

Priority: Normal

Merge Risk: Minimal · up to 7f6f8

The clipboard timeout and copy-feedback changes have no identified merge-blocking issue. Normal checks remain appropriate before merging.

Pre-merge checks: 4 · 1

Failed checks: 1 warning

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage		Docstring coverage is 2.22% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 45 functions across 7 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

Passed checks: 4 passed

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check		The title clearly summarizes the main change: bounding Linux clipboard helpers to prevent hung wl-copy or wl-paste processes from freezing Herdr.
Description check		The description directly explains the clipboard timeout, process cleanup, feedback behavior, platform scope, testing, and reported validation.
Linked Issues check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check		Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Confidence Score: 5/5

[Medium impact] The PR appears safe to merge; both previous findings are fixed and no new actionable issues were found.

Summary

Linux clipboard helpers now share a five-second deadline for input, output, and exit. Failed helpers are killed and collected, while successful background clipboard owners remain running.

• Linux clipboard helpers finish or get cleaned up within five seconds.
• Copy feedback appears after the clipboard dispatch reports success.

Both previous findings are fixed. No new actionable issues were found in the changes since the last review. Tests were inspected, not run.

Diagram

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
  A[Clipboard request] --> B[Set shared five-second deadline]
  B --> C[Start helper in its own process group]
  C --> D[Read or write without blocking]
  D --> E{Helper result}
  E -->|Exit zero and pipes finished| F[Return success; preserve background owner]
  E -->|Failure or deadline reached| G[Kill process group and collect child]
  G --> H[Try remaining fallback within deadline]
  F --> I[Show copy feedback]

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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• 🪄 Fix comments: Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR

Prompt to fix review comments

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only still-valid issues, skip the rest with a brief reason, keep changes
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Inline comments:
Review comments at @src/platform/linux/clipboard_tests.rs:
- Around line 205-213: Update the descendant-exit check in
`clipboard_failed_wrapper_kills_descendants` to use the `/proc/<pid>/stat` state
check already present in the sibling test, treating zombie and terminated states
as no longer running. Use that check in both the polling loop and final
assertion.

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Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 5608de0 and 9c78741.

Files selected for processing: 6

• src/client/shell/actions.rs
• src/client/shell/tests/copy.rs
• src/client/shell_runtime.rs
• src/platform/linux.rs
• src/platform/linux/clipboard.rs
• src/platform/linux/clipboard_tests.rs

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