> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 at 6:36 AM
> From: "Denis Kudriashov" <dionisi...@gmail.com>
> To: "Any question about pharo is welcome" <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org>
> Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Thread-safe initialization of class state (was Re: 
> Threads safety in Pharo)
> 
> What package you explore? I not find fileTypes method in Pharo 7. 

Like I said, it's a hypothetical example. But I'm sure you could find similar 
examples of unsafe class state initialization in the image and in popular 
libraries.

> 2017-08-11 8:53 GMT+02:00 monty 
> <mon...@programmer.net[mailto:mon...@programmer.net]>:Here's a hypothetical 
> broken class method that does lazy initialization of a class inst var:
> 
> fileTypes
>         fileTypes ifNil: [
>                 fileTypes := Dictionary new.
>                 fileTypes
>                         at: 'txt' put: 'Text File';
>                         at: 'html' put: 'Web Page';
>                         at: 'pdf' put: 'Portable Document Format File';
>                         at: 'doc' put: 'Microsoft Word Document'].
>         ^ fileTypes.
> 
> Because the assignment is done first and the initialization is done after 
> with a cascade of interruptable sends of #at:put:, there's a window after the 
> assignment where 'fileTypes' is not nil but also not fully initialized--a 
> race condition.
> 
> The fix is simple. Do the initialization before the atomic assignment takes 
> place, so the var is only ever bound to nil or a fully initialized object:
> 
> fileTypes
>         fileTypes ifNil: [
>                 fileTypes :=
>                         Dictionary new
>                                 at: 'txt' put: 'Text File';
>                                 at: 'html' put: 'Web Page';
>                                 at: 'pdf' put: 'Portable Document Format 
> File';
>                                 at: 'doc' put: 'Microsoft Word Document';
>                                 yourself].
>         ^ fileTypes.
> 
> The fixed code is still vulnerable to duplicate initialization, because the 
> initialization sequence is interruptable and 'fileTypes' is nil during it, 
> but as long as the initialization is cheap enough, has no side effects that 
> restrict how often it can be done, and it's enough that the initialized 
> objects are equal (but not identical), that's OK.
> 
> If it's too complex for a single statement, you can use a temp vars or put it 
> in a separate factory method:
> 
> fileTypes
>         fileTypes ifNil: [
>                 fileTypes := self newFileTypes].
>         ^ fileTypes.
> 
> Similar precautions (given how easy) might as well be taken with explicit 
> initialization of class state too. Of course if the object is mutated later 
> (in other methods), then Mutexes or other constructs are needed to guard 
> access. But for immutable class state, ensuring initialization is done before 
> assignment should be enough.
> 
> > Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2017 at 7:36 AM
> > From: "Stephane Ducasse" 
> > <stepharo.s...@gmail.com[mailto:stepharo.s...@gmail.com]>
> > To: "Any question about pharo is welcome" 
> > <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org[mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org]>
> > Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Threads safety in Pharo
> >
> > I would love to have an analysis of assumptions made in some code.
> > Because my impression is that the concurrent code is sometimes defined
> > knowing the underlying logic of scheduler and this is not good.
> > As I said to abdel privately in french it would be great to start from
> > my french squeak book (Yes I wrote one long time ago) chapter on
> > concurrent programming and turn it into a pharo chapter.
> >
> > Stef
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Ben Coman 
> > <b...@openinworld.com[mailto:b...@openinworld.com]> wrote:
> > > Not sure I'll have what you're looking for, but to start, do you mean
> > > Pharo's green threads or vm native threads?
> > > cheers -ben
> > >
> > > On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 7:38 AM, Alidra Abdelghani via Pharo-users
> > > <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org[mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org]> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > >> From: Alidra Abdelghani <alidran...@yahoo.fr[mailto:alidran...@yahoo.fr]>
> > >> To: pharo-users@lists.pharo.org[mailto:pharo-users@lists.pharo.org]
> > >> Cc: "Stéphane Ducasse" 
> > >> <stephane.duca...@inria.fr[mailto:stephane.duca...@inria.fr]>, farid arfi
> > >> <arf...@hotmail.com[mailto:arf...@hotmail.com]>
> > >> Bcc:
> > >> Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 01:38:58 +0200
> > >> Subject: Threads safety in Pharo
> > >> Hi,
> > >>
> > >> Somebody once evoked the problem of threads safety in Pharo. With a 
> > >> friend
> > >> of mine who is expert in formal methods and process scheduling, we would
> > >> like to have a look on it.
> > >> Does anyone knows a good document describing the problem of Pharo with
> > >> threads safety or at least any document that we can start with?
> > >>
> > >> Thanks in advance,
> > >> Abdelghani
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> >
>

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