[gclist] Boehm gc & SMP-Linux threads

[Hans Boehm]

On Dec 8,  5:12pm, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> Subject: [gclist] Boehm gc & SMP-Linux threads
> Hi,
>
> We've just started looking at getting the Boehm (et al) collector
> working with Posix threads, in particular on Linux with Xavier Leroy's
> kernel threads package, and also on Digital Unix.
I believe Ian Piumarta has a version that supports Digital's Pthreads.
My web page points to it.  I don't know of a Linux port.
>
> Has anyone else done any work on either of these yet?
>
> If not, does anyone have any suggestions about what approach to take?
There was a long discussion of this on comp.threads.programming over the
last few days.  Xavier Leroy was one of the participants.
>
> We were thinking of trying to adapt the Boehm collector's Irix thread
> support.  Unfortunately, the documentation says that the Irix thread
> support uses some assumptions that Posix threads don't guarantee, but
> doesn't say what those assumptions are, and they weren't apparent from
> a quick inspection of the code.
The signal handler acquires a lock and waits on a condition variable.
I've been assured that this is not portable.  But the comp.threads.programming
discussion points out some alternatives that have a better chance of working on
other systems.

There also seems to be consensus that this is a good way to flush out bugs in
threads packages.  Good luck.

Hans




-- 
Hans-Juergen Boehm
boehm@mti.sgi.com