Re: Adding threading support to lang/sbcl

[Kevin Bloom <ktnb%netbsd.org@localhost>]

> > 
> > I've found an issue with our current build of lang/sbcl in which it
> > isn't compiled with threading support. This means that if you attempt
> > to use the bordeaux-threads[1] library it won't work. I've tested it
> > locally and it appears to work as expected useing the attached patch.
> > 
> > Does anyone know of a reason why this wasn't added before or have any
> > reason why I shouldn't add it? I don't really see the need for making
> > an option for it as it doesn't change much of anything from a
> > packaging point of view.
>
> I think the main question is whether it is stable enough to deploy.
>
> On the one hand, this is hard to ascertain for sure -- ideally SBCL
> would have some stress tests to exercise various kinds of plausible
> races.
>
> On the other hand, nobody wrote down the details of any instability
> from past experiments.  So maybe it was an oversight.
>
> I'd suggest flipping it on and running the SBCL test suite -- and, if
> there's no tests that specifically exercise threads in it, try some
> small experiments with threads that do lots of memory allocation to
> exercise the GC and do some coordination (mutexes, condvars, threaded
> queues, whatever).

Okay, good idea. I'll give it a try and see what happens.