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Diffstat (limited to 'community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads.mdwn')
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diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..4ac20b45 --- /dev/null +++ b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/pthreads.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] + +[[meta license="""[[toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[toggleable +id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this +document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or +any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant +Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license +is included in the section entitled +[[GNU_Free_Documentation_License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] + +[[meta title="Convert Hurd Libraries and Servers to pthreads"]] + +The Hurd was originally created at a time when the [pthreads +standard](http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/pthread.h.html) +didn't exist yet. Thus all Hurd servers and libraries are using the old +[[cthreads|hurd/libcthreads]] package that came with [[microkernel/Mach]], +which is not compatible with [[pthreads|hurd/libpthread]]. + +Not only does that mean that people hacking on Hurd internals have to deal with +a non-standard thread package, which nobody is familiar with. Although a +pthreads implementation for the Hurd was created in the meantime, it's not +possible to use both cthreads and pthreads in the same program. Consequently, +pthreads can't presently be used in any Hurd servers -- including translators. + +Some work already has been done once on converting the Hurd servers and +libraries to use pthreads, but that work hasn't been finished. It is available +as [[GNU_Savannah_task 5487]] and can of course be used to base the new work +upon. + +The goal of this project is to have all the Hurd code use pthreads. Should any +limitations in the existing pthreads implementation turn up that hinder this +transition, they will have to be fixed as well. + +One possible option is creating a wrapper that implements the cthreads +interfaces on top of pthreads, to ease the transition -- but it might very well +turn out that it's easier to just change all the existing code to use pthreads +directly. This is up to the student. Such a wrapper has been proposed as +[[GNU_Savannah_task 7895]] and its implementation would be a useful +starting-point. + +This project requires relatively little Hurd-specific knowledge. Experience +with multithreaded programming in general and pthreads in particular is +required, though. + +Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi) + +Exercise: Take some small piece of code using ctreads and convert it to +pthreads. |