[armedbear-devel] ABCL threading questions

[David Wang]

Hello,

I just started working with ABCL's (version 0.26.1) threading
functionality and had two questions along those lines:

1. Is there documentation for the threading support somewhere? Even a
list of applicable methods and which src files they are defined in
would be useful. I already found threads.lisp and abcl's swank
interface. I was wondering if there were conditional-variables or
conditional-waits, and was just interested in seeing what other
functionality is currently supported.

2. This question is a little more complicated, and deals with when
(format t "text") will print to std-out/repl and when it won't.

When I make a thread that uses (format t ...), I can see the output on
the std-out/repl when I run abcl from a terminal, but not when I run
it from emacs/slime. I'm guessing the reason for this is that swank
doesn't redirect output from the other threads to emacs.
a.)  Is there a reason for not redirecting this output? i.e. will it
interfere with swank's operation?
b.)  Is there a fix or some places I should look to see if I can write a fix?

For those interested in code, I've included some below, the following
code starts two threads that send "thread1" and "thread2" messages to
one mailbox. It then starts a third thread that reads from that
mailbox and prints its contents. The third thread's output can be seen
if this code is loaded from a terminal/prompt, but not within slime.

- Thank you.

============================================================

(in-package #:cl-user)

(defun mailbox-send (mailbox item)
  "Sends an item into the mailbox, notifying 1 waiter
   to wake up for retrieval of that object.
   Copied and fixed from threads.lisp"
  (threads:synchronized-on
   mailbox
   (setf (threads::mailbox-queue mailbox)
		 (nconc (threads::mailbox-queue mailbox) `(,item)))
     (threads:object-notify mailbox)))

(defun mailbox-read (mailbox &key (blocking t))
  "Blocks on the mailbox until an item is available for reading.
   When an item is available, it is returned."
  (threads:synchronized-on
   mailbox
   (when blocking
	 (loop (unless (threads:mailbox-empty-p mailbox)
			 (return))
		(threads:object-wait mailbox)))
   (if (threads:mailbox-empty-p mailbox)
	   (values nil nil)
	   (values (pop (threads::mailbox-queue mailbox)) t))
   ))

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;; THREAD TEST

(defparameter *mailbox* (threads:make-mailbox))
(defvar *stop-mailbox* (threads:make-mailbox))

(defun send-stop ()
  (mailbox-send *stop-mailbox* :stop))

(defun read-stop ()
  (eq (threads:mailbox-peek *stop-mailbox*) :stop))

(defun clear-stop ()
  (threads:synchronized-on
   *stop-mailbox*
   (setf (threads::mailbox-queue *stop-mailbox*) '())))

(defun tfn1 ()
  (loop
	 (when (read-stop)
	   (return))
	 (mailbox-send *mailbox* (format nil "thread1"))
	 (sleep 1)))

(defun tfn2 ()
  (loop
	 (when (read-stop)
	   (return))
	 (mailbox-send *mailbox* (format nil "thread2"))
	 (sleep 1)))

(defun tprint-mailbox ()
  (loop
	 (when (read-stop)
	   (return))
	 (format t "~s~%" (mailbox-read *mailbox*))))

(defparameter *thread1* (threads:make-thread #'tfn1))
(defparameter *thread2* (threads:make-thread #'tfn2))
(defparameter *thread3* (threads:make-thread #'tprint-mailbox))