Re: A common Policy for porting pthread application

[Jeff Bailey <jbailey@nisa.net>]

On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 05:02:07PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote:
> Hi ,
> 
>  Is there a common method for porting pthread application? I mean is
> there a dummy pthread.h file which contain set of macros that will map
> all sort of pthread functions( atleast mutex functions) to the one
> available on hurd ?

cthreads is currently the only threading library that works on the
hurd.  The reason we can't simply provide easy cthreads->pthreads
mapping is because pthreads provides so many more functions.

In general, if your application relies on:
o mutex locks
o spin locks
o thread creation
o thread_self

you can port to cthreads without any problems.  However, none of the
specs that I've read handle any sort of per-thread signal masking, or
a number of the ideas that pthreads offers.

I just got (After 3 months of looking) the Oreilly & Ass. pthreads
programming book.  I'm hoping that it will be a good enough reference
that I write a simple shim to provide those functions and #error out
on any calls that aren't easily supported.

My idea is that with a simple pthreads->cthreads shim, we can then
port the underlying Hurd servers to pthreads, and not have to worry
about the complications of running two different threading systems
(mentioned by Roland a month or so ago).

Tks,
Jeff Bailey