OpenEuphoria

Re: windows threads work!!

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Jul 11, 2006
• 702 views

jacques deschênes wrote:
> Maybe Robert Craig could confirm my hypothesis about static linkage of CRT in
> exwc.exe

exwc.exe (and exw.exe) are compiled with Watcom C, 
and they statically link with Watcom's standard C library.

You might be able to get O/S threads working in a few 
small programs, but there are some major problems
that will prevent operating system pre-emptive threads
from working *reliably*. As you are aware, the C run-time
library needs to be thread-safe, but Watcom's library is not.
On top of that, Euphoria's run-time routines are not thread
safe. For instance, Ref() and DeRef() operations are performed
all over the interpreter. If the O/S were to pre-emptively
switch to another thread in the middle of a Ref or DeRef,
the reference count on an object could get messed up, eventually
leading to a storage leak or a crash. A program might run
a hundred times successfully before crashing mysteriously on
the hundred and first run. I'd probably have to abandon 
reference counting, and go to garbage collection, as one step 
in supporting preemptive O/S threads. (Remember that Euphoria 3.0
pre-alpha already supports *cooperative* threads (tasks)).

Regards,
   Rob Craig
   Rapid Deployment Software
   http://www.RapidEuphoria.com