Re: simple and efficient way to have bi-directional communication between lua process

[Javier Guerra <javier@...>]

On Thursday 08 February 2007, Asko Kauppi wrote:
> - Control of the thread execution (percentage, done, cancelled) can
> be done in a way that the two threads don't write on same fields. If
> only one thread writes, and the other reads, there is no need for
> locking. Or locking is kind of built into the data usage.

do you mean a thread-safe FIFO? sure they're great... and usually implemented 
using semaphores.

> There's a minimal critical section

you know critical sections are also a locking operation, right? it's easy to 
implement them using semaphores; or the other way around, if you like.

in all, my point is that if you use threads (and i think the'll be more and 
more inescapable with multiple-core chips getting so comon), then you have to 
decide on a few primitives (a FIFO might be the easiest, i used some on my 
helper threads toolkit), and build your functionality on top of that.

but unfortunately, there are very few multiplatform options.  in LuaThreads, 
Diego wrote a very thin adaptor library to get a subset of a pthreads-like 
API on windows.  it's very minimal, i think only 200 or so lines of C.  once 
you have that, it's easy to build everything else.


-- 
Javier

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