X-Git-Url: http://repo.macrolet.net/gitweb/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=doc%2Fbeyond-ansi.sgml;h=c29fd52e68bef1d1b2e4a426b7a600516b5eb832;hb=592ecf78ec904eea390ca67dbacf00d486276c58;hp=388ebdf073687755b804693bc5698fe8c7d89b7e;hpb=2675adcb29d689ee6d270f52658af17f2deeaf77;p=sbcl.git diff --git a/doc/beyond-ansi.sgml b/doc/beyond-ansi.sgml index 388ebdf..c29fd52 100644 --- a/doc/beyond-ansi.sgml +++ b/doc/beyond-ansi.sgml @@ -155,13 +155,16 @@ system's concept of threads or lightweight processes. can be found in the sb-thread package. This is intended for public consumption, so look at the exported symbols and their documentation strings. + Dynamic bindings to symbols are per-thread. Signal handlers are per-thread. + sb-ext:quit exits the current thread, not necessarily the whole environment. The environment will be shut down when the last thread exits. + Threads arbitrate between themselves for the user's attention. A thread may be in one of three notional states: foreground, @@ -171,6 +174,7 @@ saying that it has stopped. The user at his leisure may switch to that thread to find out what it needs. If a background thread enters the debugger, selecting any restart will put it back into the background before it resumes. + If the user has multiple views onto the same Lisp image (for example, using multiple terminals, or a windowing system, or network @@ -178,21 +182,23 @@ access) they are typically set up as multiple `sessions' such that each view has its own collection of foreground/background/stopped threads. sb-thread:make-listener-thread can be used to start a new thread in its own `session'. + Mutexes and condition variables are available for managing access to shared data: see - (apropos "mutex" :sb-thread) + (apropos "condition" :sb-thread) + and the waitqueue structure - -and poke around in their documentation strings. +and poke around in their documentation strings. + Implementation (Linux x86) @@ -203,16 +209,19 @@ se, but there is plenty wrong (from our perspective) with LinuxThreads. &SBCL; threads are mapped 1:1 onto Linux tasks which share a VM but nothing else - each has its own process id and can be seen in e.g. ps output. + Per-thread local bindings for special variables is achieved using the %fs segment register to point to a per-thread storage area. This may cause interesting results if you link to foreign code that expects threading or creates new threads, and the thread library in question uses %fs in an incompatible way. + Threads waiting on queues (e.g. for locks or condition variables) are put to sleep using sigtimedwait() and woken with SIGCONT. + &SBCL; at present will alway have at least two tasks running as seen from Linux: when the first process has done startup @@ -220,6 +229,7 @@ initialization (mapping files in place, installing signal handlers etc) it creates a new thread to run the Lisp startup and initial listener. The original thread stays around to reap dead subthreads and deallocate their resources (e.g. stacks) when they exit. + Garbage collection is done with the existing Conservative Generational GC. Allocation is done in small (typically 8k) regions : @@ -231,11 +241,13 @@ interesting behaviour if they are interrupted in system calls. The streams interface is believed to handle the required system call restarting correctly, but this may be a consideration when making other blocking calls e.g. from foreign library code. + Large amounts of the &SBCL; library have not been inspected for thread-safety. Some of the obviously unsafe areas have large locks around them, so compilation and fasl loading, for example, cannot be parallelized. Work is ongoing in this area. + A new thread by default is created in the same POSIX process group and session as the thread it was created by. This has an impact @@ -245,12 +257,18 @@ process group, including Lisp threads that &SBCL; considers to be notionally `background'. This is undesirable, so background threads are set to ignore the SIGINT signal. Arbitration for the input stream is managed by locking on sb-thread::*session-lock* + A thread can be created in a new Lisp 'session' (new terminal or window) using sb-thread:make-listener-thread. These sessions map directly onto POSIX sessions, so that pressing Control-C in the wrong window will not interrupt them - this has been found to be embarrassing. + + + + + Support For Unix</> @@ -271,10 +289,14 @@ is also supported.</para> one argument is implementation-defined. In &SBCL; it calls functions on the user-settable list <varname>sb-ext:*module-provider-functions*</varname> - see the <function>require</function> documentation string for details. +</para> <para>The toplevel repl prompt may be customized, and the function that reads user input may be replaced completely. <!-- FIXME but I don't currently remember how --> +</para> + +</sect2> <sect2><title>Tools To Help Developers