Re: [DotGNU]thread's questions

[Gopal V]

If memory serves me right, imateos wrote:
> Hi all,

Since Rhys has probably slept by now ... I'll try to stand-in and 
explain :-)

> I'm trying to understand how the differents threads in the engine are 
> created and sincronized:

Currently pnet supports only one thread IIRC ...

        ILThreadAtomicStart();
        ....
        ILThreadAtomicEnd();

is used for Mutex IIRC .. 

The support/thread.c has all the Sync function you'll ever need .. if 
you do get around to hacking on threading , those functions will help
you ...

Threading work in current pnet is about enabling threading and then 
debugging the segfaults as they occur by adding locks ... I really wish
we could have Rhys write out the basic internal calls like 

#ifdef ENABLE_THREADING
        threading code ...
#endif

and those debugging it can uncomment ENABLE_THREADING and hack out issues.
Last time Nick (of Qt#) tried it and gave up after some time ...

Anyway a lot of locks are needed right now :-)

This is not newbie stuff but is a lot easier because support/thread.c has
a set of nice tests in ilunit/test_thread test-suite ... I think if anyone
with basic threading experience got down and dirty for a week or so , it
might be just what the doctor ordered !.

> Is always a garbage collector thread running?

I think Boehm does not use a threaded GC . As far as my experience lies ,
it starts collecting when an alloc fails ... But I might be wrong !

Anyway stack-traces of finalize calls seem to appear to be starting from
a point in code rather than from a seperate thread ... (which makes debugging
it a lot harder than usual)..

> When and where is the "ILThreadCreate" function called?
> 
> As far as I've understood, one ILThread is created for each application?

1 ILExecProcess for each app
Many threads are grouped under ILExecProcess

ilrun.c: 346
        thread = ILExecProcessGetMain(process);

The ILExecThread allows for thread local variables. ( though why I should
say that now ... I don't know ...)

Does that answer your question ?

Gopal
-- 
The difference between insanity and genius is measured by success