Re: Are lua_State's thread safe?

[Eric Scouten <scouten@...>]

Yes, given this caveat, you can use the same lua_State from multiple 
threads. However, you may not want to.

The most obvious path to being thread-safe is to redefine lua_lock and 
lua_unlock in llimits.h. Our experience suggests that while correct, 
this is a bad idea. You'll spend way too much time in the OS mutex code. 
(This was observed on MacOS. The threading implementation is based on 
pthreads, so we would expect similar results on many *nix flavors.)

In order for multi-threading to work with Lua, you should either find a 
relatively course-grained lock/unlock bottleneck or simply use different 
Lua universes (i.e. lua_States that aren't related to each other).

-Eric



Dolan, Ryanne Thomas (UMR-Student) wrote:

> You will have to use synchronization techniques such as mutexes to keep
> different threads from accessing the lua_State at the same time, or else
> you will get unexpected results and crashes.
>
> Really you will need to keep threads from accessing your LuaManager
> object at the same time also for the same reasons.  Anytime a shared
> variable is manipulated by different threads you need to use
> synchronization.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lua-bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br
> [mailto:lua-bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br] On Behalf Of John Klimek
> Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 12:28 PM
> To: Lua list
> Subject: Are lua_State's thread safe?
>
> I'm wondering if I can create a single object (lets call it
> LuaManager) with a method called RunScript and then have several
> socket threads share the same object which is sharing the same
> lua_State.
>
> Is this possible?  Is it safe?
>
>  


--
Eric Scouten | scouten@adobe.com | Photography: www.ericscouten.com