Re: [lwip-users] critical section protection + timer issues questions

[Leon Woestenberg]

Hello Scott,

Scott Taggart wrote:

> I do not want my threads to HAVE to call into the sys.c stuff JUST to 
> get the LWIP timer stuff to function.  As it is, I see no other 
> work-around – because the LWIP timer stuff DEMANDs that all threads 
> block in the previously mentioned 3 calls, I see no choice.  I find this 
> incredibly restrictive and arrogant – to presume that all threads on all 
> o/ss must end up in some internal LWIP function call for the stack to 
> work.  Again, if I am missing something, I would love to know it.  
>
You can easily drop the wrappers around the lwIP core and adapt it to
your (RT)OS needs.

We implemented a lwIP/uCOS-II/BSD-alike-socket-API wrapper that gives
us all the functionality of the three components: TCP/IP, pre-emptive
real-time multitasking (even with low-latency nested interrupting) and
a convenient socket API that all tasks can access.

It is on my to-do to show you how we did this (for example by 
contributing to the contrib CVS module).

> Another way to state this is that I just don’t understand why the LWIP 
> implementer(s) did not require a form of timer callback and that they 
> didn’t just deal with the critical section issues, as required.  OK, so 
> it’s free and it was designed to run on a small embedded enviroment and 
> not on every o/s.  Still seems like an odd design restriction to me.
Criticism taken. I think this is a weaker point of lwIP, on hindsight, 
but the design made sense in its original context. However, you are not
the only one struggling with integration problems; you are integrating
software modules that have different design philosophies and that takes
either creativity, or standardization, to hook them up.

I myself would be interested in going for a small lwIP that purely calls
IEEE POSIX calls (pthread_*) for synchronization.

However, for maintenance reasons, I would not add that to the current
source code, as yes, it is burden with enough wrapper stuff already.


Regards,

Leon.