Re: [Help-glpk] Parallel runs of glpk

[Andrew Makhorin]

Mathieu,

> 
> I think I can solve the problem by extending the second solution
> and having it backward compatible. It suffices to have
> reentrant functions that take env as argument and non-reentrant
> functions that takes no env argument.
> 
> 
> So, we are still backward compatible but offer a reentrant
> alternative.
> 
> 
> Are you interested? I think it would be nice to finally address the
> issue.
> 

Glpk is a serial code; it has no features to run in parallel. So, as I
explained in my previous post, there is no sense to make it thread-safe.
If it is necessary to solve several *independent* problems at the same
time (for example, on a multi-core CPU), it is sufficient to run several
instances of glpk as separate processes, in which case thread-safety is
not needed. Replacing glp_set/get_tls with a reenterant version gives
the same effect, but allows to run multiple instances of glpk within the
same process that sometimes may be preferred. I think this is normal for
non-interactive applications that perform numerical computations.


Best regards,

Andrew Makhorin