Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 17:31:04 -0800 From: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com> To: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com> Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Revisitted.. Threads goals.? Message-ID: <19991130173104.K301@sturm.canonware.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9911292207120.7902-100000@current1.whistle.com>; from julian@whistle.com on Mon, Nov 29, 1999 at 10:45:28PM -0800 References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9911201834440.6767-100000@current1.whistle.com> <Pine.BSF.4.10.9911292207120.7902-100000@current1.whistle.com>
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On Mon, Nov 29, 1999 at 10:45:28PM -0800, Julian Elischer wrote: > > I think this is a good time for us to re-examine some of the things that > we decided were goals. > > I have somme comments I'd like to make AT THE END, but after the general > neuron frying of the last week or so it might be a good idea to look at > these again and see if any of them have changed in light of the > discussion. I have difficulty in seeing this list as exhaustive or > correct. We need someone who is very into threads to contribute. > Jason? What do yuo see as YOUR goals? Whew, I just now caught up with the volumes of email that you guys generated while I was eating turkey 1000 miles from home. =) Thus the delayed response. Right now, I'm concerning myself with last minute details for 4.0. Most of the discussion in -arch has concerned what I hope we can start tackling after 4.0 is released. Pre-4.0 goals: I sent email a week ago with a list of PRs that I intend to go through. A couple of additional PRs have been brought to my attention since then. I've gathered sufficient documentation to go through our current threads implementation and verify our compliance/noncompliance with the POSIX spec. This is a longer-term goal, but I want to put together a relatively complete compliance/correctness test suite, which should save us time in the end. In addition to the general cleanup that needs to happen, Daniel has some patches I'm sitting on (I'll look at them RSN, honest!) that will in all likelihood be committed this week. One goal that I did not list last week, but one that is important (first brought up by Peter, I think), is to make the LinuxThreads work done by Richard natively useable (i.e. not under Linux emulation). This is admittedly an interim solution, but it should be relatively easy to make work, and will be genuinely useful in a number of places. Post-4.0 goals: The discussion thus far in -arch has been great. I'm in general agreement with what Julian and Daniel have discussed. There are still a couple of details to work out, but I feel good about the direction the conversation has gone. Matthew has brought up some alternatives that in my mind still need to be discussed a bit. The lure of simplicity is great, but it isn't clear to me that Matthew's proposal meets all of our goals. Then again, I can't claim to understand the full scope of his proposal, whereas I've read the SA papers and have a good feel for that class of threads solution. One pragmatic issue that we need to discuss is how well we can develop the new threads package in an evolutionary fashion. There are a number of kernel modifications (at least scheduler and upcall mechanisms, possibly a new call gate), as well as the need for a significantly different UTS from what we have now. Perhaps we can discuss our plan of attack in some detail as soon as we're all basically happy with the planned final solution. Like I said before, there are a couple of unresolved design issues in my mind, so it probably makes sense to wrap those up first. Okay, time to catch a train. More at 11. Jason To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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