Bug#472500: Bug#472702: ruby1.8: thread implementation has "a couple serious bugs"

[akira yamada <akira@debian.org>]

Hi,

>> According to a discussion thread on Google's ruby-talk [1], there are "a
>> couple serious bugs" in Ruby's thread implementation.
> 
> Please provide precise pointers to the bugs (or code to reproduce them).
> The mailing list thread you are pointing to is very old, and only
> contains vague accusations.

I don't know detail of the problem.
But Capistrano 2.1 print outs the following message:

  You are running Ruby 1.8.6, which has a bug in its threading implementation.
  You are liable to encounter deadlocks running Capistrano, unless you install
  the fastthread library, which is available as a gem:

I think that it is a case of "a couple serious bugs".
(I couldn't find detail of the reason of
the message from the svn-repo of Capistrano.)

I tested about this message using unit-tests of Capistrano 2.1.

When I run the tests with ruby1.8_1.8.6-2,
the result was the following:

  $ rake
  [...]
  Loaded suite /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake/rake_test_loader
  Started
  ... [...] ...deadlock 0xb76afb14: sleep:-  - ./test/../lib/capistrano/gateway.rb:57
  deadlock 0xb7c3a700: sleep:- (main) - ./test/../lib/capistrano/gateway.rb:64
  ./test/../lib/capistrano/gateway.rb:64:in `wait': Thread(0xb7c3a700): deadlock (fatal)

And when I run it with ruby1.8_1.8.6.36-1 or ruby1.8_1.8.6.111-2,
the result was all OK.

-- 
ay