Re: RFC: Lightweight synchronization mechanism for gnumach

[Agustina Arzille]

On 02/28/2016 02:59 PM, Richard Braun wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 10:53:12PM -0300, Agustina Arzille wrote:
> > Hello, everyone.
> >
> > Here's a patch for gnumach that implements a lightweight synchronization
> > mechanism. It can be used as a basis to build many higher-level objects like
> > mutexes, semaphores, etc. Given its genericity, and because I'm terrible at
> > naming things, I decided to name this module "gsync", as in
> > "generic synchronization".
> Hello,
>
> It's been a long time since we've received such high quality
> contributions out of the blue. Thanks for that :).
>
> The patch looks fine, although I've only taken a quick look for now.
> Concerning names and the interface, I'd personally advocate following
> what Linux does, because Linux is the de facto current standard, and
> it would make it easier to e.g. reuse the pthread glibc implementation
> (some efforts regarding portability have been made there but I'm
> almost positive having a semi or completely compatible interface would
> help a lot). The Linux mechanism is also very well documented and
> they've spent time on the tricky issues already, so we might just
> avoid wasting time there.
>
> In any case, it's definitely the right direction.

Hello, Richard.

Thank you for your kind words!

I named it differently because I feel "futex" doesn't really convey what it
does, but I agree that consistency with standards (even de facto ones) is
a good idea.

On the other hand, I would prefer it if we made some changes to the 
interface
as implemented in the Linux kernel. Linux has a single, monolithic syscall
that multiplexes according to an "operation" parameter. For gnumach, I think
having separate RPC's is the better way.

I'll resubmit the patch with the new names when I come back from lunch.