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Date:      Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:53:07 -0500 (EST)
From:      Daniel Eischen <deischen@freebsd.org>
To:        Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com>
Cc:        freebsd-threads@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Question about our default pthread stack size
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.4.43.0411191439340.17094-100000@sea.ntplx.net>
In-Reply-To: <419E38A0.2030308@marcuscom.com>

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On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

> Daniel Eischen wrote:
> | The thing I worry about is these piggy applications being the
> | driving force behind our stack size.  If they really are designed
> | to need a huge stack size, they should be the ones that change
> | to support it, not the other way around.  Do they know their own
> | stack space requirements or do they just ignore it because it
> | isn't a problem so far (on Linux)?
>
> The bottom line is that they don't know their stack requirements, but
> the OS is accommodating, so they never have to really find out until we
> submit a bug to them.  However, some applications (e.g. gstreamer,
> libgnomecups, etc.) cannot be fixed without massive architectural
> changes.  Just to be clear, these applications _are_ overrunning the
> default stack.

FYI, I don't suggest they change their stack usage, just that
they create threads with thread attributes specifying a larger
stack size.  If they recognize they have large stack space
requirements, it should be easily solved without an architectural
overhaul.  I assume your patches do exactly this; are the GNOME
developers reluctant to incorporate your patches?

I'm not going to argue very strongly against changing the
default stack size.  I just think the onus should be on
the larger applications to recognize that they need larger
stacks and to explicitly set it.  There may also be other
applications that create a lot of threads which may need
to lower the stack size if the default were changed.

-- 
DE



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