Hi all,
I have added an implementation of the thread library function table for
DRLVM which can be enabled by building with the "-Dhy.no.thr=true" flag
specified on the Ant command line. This means we no longer need to build
the classlib thread library in the federated build, and we also no
longer need to copy the DRLVM hythr library into jre/bin (although I
havn't changed the build to not do the copy yet). I have temporarily set
the hythr library version to 0.2 so that the federated build can be run
with and without the hy.no.thr flag set.
This opens a couple of questions for discussion:
1) Shall we set the hy.no.thr option to true as default? I personally
think we should - the classlib hythr library is not used in the
federated builds, so there is no reason to continue building it.
2) Shall we remove the thread library from classlib altogether? If
hy.no.thr=true becomes the default, I can see reasons for and against
[1] removing the source from classlib, but I think the reasons to remove
the code outweigh the reasons to keep it. My vote is to remove that
source module from classlib altogether.
Ideas/comments?
Regards,
Oliver
[1] A few I can think of straight off:
For:
- Unused thread library code in classlib is unlikely to be maintained.
- Some classlib thread code is incorrect (x86_64 linux has some invalid
assembler code I believe).
- Shrinks the source tree footprint.
- All VMs will likely have their own implementation of this
functionality anyway.
Against:
- Raises the bar slightly for VM vendors wishing to use the Harmony
class libraries.
--
Oliver Deakin
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