FileEditor's flock belongs to the open file description. When another thread forks to spawn a process, the child shares the locked descriptor until it execs, so a reopen right after the drop could be refused with Error::Locked (a one-off failure of edit_interop::editor_locks_the_file in a parallel test run). Drop now unlocks before closing, which releases the lock for every descriptor sharing it. Reproducer edit_tests::drop_releases_the_lock_while_other_threads_spawn_processes (4 threads running `true`, 2000 open/drop rounds): 1483 of 2000 reopens refused before, 0 in 30 runs after (tank). An OFD lock would not help: it is inherited across fork the same way and does not conflict with libhdf5's flock. The agent store's lock file unlocks on drop too. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>