Re: thread support

[Helmut Geyer <Helmut.Geyer@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De>]

Guenter Geiger <geiger@iem.mhsg.ac.at> writes:

> I am rather new to this list, so excuse me if this question has
> already been dealt with. 
> 
> 
> Will there be kernel level thread support for Debian ?
> 
> The Linuxthreads package from Xavier Leroy is a very good Thread
> Library supporting Posix threads. In order to develop threaded
> applications there should be some changes in different packages:
> 
>  - the libpthread0 packages comes without header files !
>   
>  - libraries should be compiled reentrant
>  
> This sounds like a big job, will it be worth it ?
> According to the linuxthreads FAQ no distribution currently supports
> reentrant libraries ( Xlib is very critical about that ) 
> 
The linuxthreads package is part of the libc6 packages, as it is an
add-on to glibc 2. As the new libraray handles threads much better
than libc5, you should base all work intended to do threading on
libc6. 

Our aim for Debian 2.0 is to provide all libs as reentrant. It usually
isn't enough just to compile it with -D_REENTRANT. You have to avoid
static and global variables and do some mutex locking.

XFree86 3.3. supports reentrant libraries when based on libc6.

        Helmut (Debian libc maintainer)

-- 
Helmut Geyer                                Helmut.Geyer@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
public PGP key available :           finger geyer@saturn.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de


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