Grim state of libpthread (needs serious cleanup)

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 06:10:01 Bernhard Reutner-Fischer wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 07:32:12AM +0100, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> >On Monday 16 March 2009 06:17, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> >> On Sunday 15 March 2009 22:55:56 Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> >> > I am going to add this script to docs/* in hope to at least
> >> > start some cleanup work. Libpthread (any of its three flavors
> >> > we have) is poorly documented and looks too complex.
> >>
> >> "too complex" is an opinion :p.  attempting to "clean up" linuxthreads
> >> beyond anything cursory is a waste of time and likely to result in
> >> unnoticed regressions.
> >
> >That's why I did not start frenzily patching it, and brought up
> >the issue on the list.
> >
> >There are several things I can do, all have pros and cons:
> >
> >* Start improving it myself
> >  Pros: something will be done
> >  Cons: I can break libpthreads since I am not an active user of it
> >
> >* Send mails with veiled (or blunt) accusations that whoever worked on
> >  libpthreads did a bad job.
> >  Pros: nothing will break (more than it is broken now)
> >  Cons: nothing will likely be materially fixed, time will be wasted
> >  in flamewars and I will likely get a few developers antagonized.
> >
> >Which road do you think I should take?
>
> I think that improving NPTL would be a good thing, i suppose that
> we ultimately want to abandon the other impls in favour of it, at
> least mid- or long-term.

i dont think so.  keeping one linuxthreads alive and "functional" isnt hard.  
ignoring the 2.4 vs 2.6 debate (and ignoring that i still see people running 
2.2 on some ports), NPTL implies TLS which simply doesnt exist for some ports.  
and while you can say "x86 has been fully vetted with TLS/NPTL/2.6", that is 
certainly not the case with all ports, and certainly not nearly as long.
-mike
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