[JDEV] Server Platforms

[Eric Bowersox]

> 	1) Although cross-platformness is a great goal, pth 
> doesn't really
> accomplish this.  (As your post shows.)

It's good at being cross-platform between UNIX-alikes...and, since it's
FSF-owned code, I don't know how eager they are for it to be used on NT :-)

> 	2) Pth takes over SIGUSR1 which is normally (?) used as 
> a "reload
> configuration files" signal.

It's usually SIGHUP that's used for reloading configuration files...however,
SIGUSR1 frequently has other "interesting" uses that, yes, pth would
preclude.

> 	3) Pth doesn't play nice when it gets near other threading
> systems.  This means that Jabber can not be linked with some
> libraries.  This limits the usefulness of Jabber in some cases.  (ODBC
> libraries are often linked with thread libraries.)

Actually, pth provides a pthreads-compatible call interface, it looks like,
so this might not be the issue you think it is.  However, I can't say for
sure.

> 	4) Pth isn't used by a lot of other projects, so it might have
> hard to track down bugs.

A few of which we've already seen :-).

> 	It has only one nice thing:
> 	Pth is cooperative threading.  Cooperative means that most race
> conditions don't come up.  Switching to a non-cooperative thread model
> would be a lot of work as races get stamped out.

True...you don't need things like mutexes as much in pth, although they're
provided.

					Eric

--
Eric J. Bowersox - Jabber Inc. - ebowersox at jabber.com
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