From owner-freebsd-current Fri Aug 7 14:53:59 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA02893 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 14:53:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from cimlogic.com.au (cimlog.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.51.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA02884 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 14:53:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jb@cimlogic.com.au) Received: (from jb@localhost) by cimlogic.com.au (8.8.8/8.8.7) id HAA11063; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 07:59:06 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from jb) From: John Birrell Message-Id: <199808072159.HAA11063@cimlogic.com.au> Subject: Kernel threads (Was Re: Pthreads woes revisited.) In-Reply-To: <199808071503.KAA14839@ns.tar.com> from "Richard Seaman, Jr." at "Aug 7, 98 10:03:43 am" To: lists@tar.com Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 07:59:06 +1000 (EST) Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Richard Seaman, Jr. wrote: > Is there a description of what needs to be done, though? Are your > patches available anywhere? If someone is really going to look at > this, I assume they don't want to duplicate work already started, > and I assume they don't want to go in some direction the core team > doesn't support? There are a number of existing syscalls which need to be redesigned to allow a POSIX thread API. AFAIK, these syscalls were (are?) used by NCI and were added by John for them. They aren't built into the FreeBSD libc so I doubt that anyone else uses them. I haven't asked for opinions about cleaning this up (until now 8-). I think there are two stages to this work. The first is to get the syscall API in and working in a uni-processor environment. The second stage is to work on the SMP side, but as you'll note from messages posted by John, there is a significant amount of work there for someone with John's ability and level of understanding of the VM. I guess it is possible to complete the first stage now, but I doubt that the second stage will happen within 6 months. I'd also say that trying to do the second stage now would destabilize 3.0 and this is something I don't want to see happen. I know that this is not what people want to hear. -- John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@freebsd.org http://www.cimlogic.com.au/ CIMlogic Pty Ltd, GPO Box 117A, Melbourne Vic 3001, Australia +61 418 353 137 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message