[webkit-dev] pthreads and other threading primitives

[Jarred Nicholls]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Alexey Proskuryakov <ap at webkit.org> wrote:

>
> In the wake of Geoff's work to simplify threading ifdefs, and Adam's review
> of supported ports, I'm curious what people think about maintaining many
> platform branches in our WTF and JavaScriptCore threading code.
>
> Right now, it feels rather non-systemic, with some code built upon
> pthreads, Qt or Gtk libraries, and some calling into Win32 API directly.
> Some specific examples:
> - JavaScriptCore/heap/MachineStackMarker.h only works with pthreads;
> - FastMalloc works with pthreads or Win32 API;
> - ThreadSpecific uses pthreads, Qt, Gtk, or Win32 API;
> - code in various ThreadingXXX.cpp and MainThreadXXX.cpp files is entirely
> custom. Chromium doesn't even use supposedly cross-platform parts in
> MainThread.cpp.
>
> Supporting multiple implementation has a high cost, both in the work
> directly applied to that, and in having subtle behavior differences.
> Checking svn blame for ThreadingQt.cpp and ThreadingGtk.cpp for example, I
> see that most lines are last touched by people who are not directly
> affiliated with these ports.
>
> I remember that performance was given as the primary reason to not use
> pthreads everywhere. What pthreads functionality in particular needs to be
> reimplemented in WTF for performance? And are there big reasons to use
> anything except for POSIX and Win32 APIs for us?


IMHO, I think JSC should go right to the metal rather than be abstracted
with port specific threading classes.  In other words, it should be broken
out by platform threading libs - POSIX and Win32 - and not by port.  After a
very rudimentary scan, I saw no reason to not use straight Win32 and POSIX.
 This would arguably reduce port barrier-to-entry and maintenance, on top of
the obvious code simplicity and slight performance increase.


> Do we want to require that platforms support pthreads, so that code that
> isn't performance critical could have just one implementation?
>

That's the status quo :)  MachineStackMarker only works with pthreads, so
QtWin32 and Win ports need pthreads-win32 right now.  pthreads is the least
common denominator at the moment.  Though there are performance reasons for
getting away from that, there is also the fact that pthreads-win32 is an
unmaintained project whose last update was 5 years ago.


>
> - WBR, Alexey Proskuryakov
>

Definitely worth a full reviewer analysis and vote I think.  This is one of
the many WebKit cleanup tasks to consider.


>
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-- 
................................................................

*Sencha*
Jarred Nicholls, Senior Software Architect
@jarrednicholls
<http://twitter.com/jarrednicholls>
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