the thread kernel into a garbage collector thread which is started when
the fisrt thread is created (other than the initial thread). This
removes the window of opportunity where a context switch will cause a
thread that has locked the malloc spinlock, to enter the thread kernel,
find there is a dead thread and try to free memory, therefore trying
to lock the malloc spinlock against itself.
The garbage collector thread acts just like any other thread, so
instead of having a spinlock to control accesses to the dead thread
list, it uses a mutex and a condition variable so that it can happily
wait to be signalled when a thread exists.
to fork. It is difficult to do real vfork in libc_r, since almost every
operation with file descriptsor changes _thread_fd_table and friends.
popen(3) works much better with this change.
for the process, not a separate set for each thread). By default, the
process now only has signal handlers installed for SIGVTALRM, SIGINFO
and SIGCHLD. The thread kernel signal handler is installed for other
signals on demand. This means that SIG_IGN and SIG_DFL processing is now
left to the kernel, not the thread kernel.
Change the signal dispatch to no longer use a signal thread, and
call the signal handler using the stack of the thread that has the
signal pending.
Change the atomic lock method to use test-and-set asm code with
a yield if blocked. This introduces separate locks for each type
of object instead of blocking signals to prevent a context
switch. It was this blocking of signals that caused the performance
degradation the people have noted.
This is a *big* change!
This will make a number of things easier in the future, as well as (finally!)
avoiding the Id-smashing problem which has plagued developers for so long.
Boy, I'm glad we're not using sup anymore. This update would have been
insane otherwise.
Here are the diffs for libc_r to get it one step closer to P1003.1c
These make most of the thread/mutex/condvar structures opaque to the
user. There are three functions which have been renamed with _np
suffixes because they are extensions to P1003.1c (I did them for JAVA,
which needs to suspend/resume threads and also start threads suspended).
I've created a new header (pthread_np.h) for the non-POSIX stuff.
The egrep tags stuff in /usr/src/lib/libc_r/Makefile that I uncommented
doesn't work. I think its best to delete it. I don't think libc_r needs
tags anyway, 'cause most of the source is in libc which does have tags.
also:
Here's the first batch of man pages for the thread functions.
The diff to /usr/src/lib/libc_r/Makefile removes some stuff that was
inherited from /usr/src/lib/libc/Makefile that should only be done with
libc.
also:
I should have sent this diff with the pthread(3) man page.
It allows people to type
make -DWANT_LIBC_R world
to get libc_r built with the rest of the world. I put this in the
pthread(3) man page. The default is still not to build libc_r.
also:
The diff attached adds a pthread(3) man page to /usr/src/share/man/man3.
The idea is that without libc_r installed, this man page will give people
enough info to know that they have to build libc_r.
It uses a static constructor to call _thread_init() at program start-up
time. That eliminates the need for any initialization hooks in crt0.o.
Added a symbol reference in "uthread_init.c", to ensure that the new
module will always be pulled in when the archive version of the library
is used.
In "Makefile.inc", defined CPLUSPLUSLIB, so that the constructor will be
properly invoked in the shared library.
Suggested by: Christopher Provenzano, Peter Wemm, and others.
John Birrell
Dmitrij Tejblum
Alexander Langer
John Polstra
Peter Wemm
Julian Elischer
Jordan K. Hubbard
Jeffrey Hsu