Re: [Bug-gnulib] Re: requirements of 'unlocked-io' module

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> The vast majority of GNU packages so far is single-threaded. We make things
>> easy for the majority; it's not a useful policy (in the sense of "worse is
>> better") to make things complicated for the majority just to serve a minority
>> and a theoretical argument.
>
> Conversely, one could argue that gnulib should default to safe mode,
> and should use unlocked-IO only when the user says "Yes, I know that
> my code is single-threaded".
>
> Ideally gnulib would do this automatically: it would detect that the
> app is multithreaded and would disable unlocked-IO.  If a package had
> some multithreaded apps and some unithreaded apps, that would work too.
> I don't know how to do that easily, though.
>
> Perhaps the simplest fix for now is to add a new macro
> gl_FUNC_GLIBC_UNLOCKED_IO that defaults to not using unlocked io, but
> uses unlocked io if it is given an argument of 1.  The existing
> jm_FUNC_GLIBC_UNLOCKED_IO would be equivalent to
> gl_FUNC_GLIBC_UNLOCKED_IO(1).  This would be a signal to the user that
> one has to decide whether any app might be multithreaded.

I like that.
If you implement this, you're welcome to change
the `jm_' prefix to `gl_' while you're at it.