[ic] Perl Threading

[Kevin Walsh]

cfm at maine.com wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 11:38:05AM -0400, Doug Alcorn wrote:
> > "Steve" <icdev at mrlock.com> writes:
> > >
> > > Does anyone know which perl modules cause Perl Threading to be an
> > > issue when setting up Interchange and Perl on Redhat 9.0?
> > >
> Server.pm probably.
>   select(undef,undef,undef,0.050) until getppid == 1;
> 
> needs to be Linux::Pid::getppid==1
> 
> Get Linux::Pid at CPAN.
> 
> See:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=4.2.0.58.20020801191058.02b8a440%40mickey.dijkmat.nl
> 
> And other instances of getpid and getppid are probably broken as well.
> I'm not sure there are any, just got into it this AM.
> 
> YMMV, we are still using mv4.03.  It seems to run satisfactorily on
> perl5.8.1 debian unstable after I clean up a pile of the regexps.  That
> cleanup has already been done in IC4.9.8.  Still that does NOT mean IC
> will run.  There may well be other things broken.
> 
My view on this matter is that it's a Perl problem, rather than an
Interchange problem.  I don't see why we should have to work around
buggy patched-up versions of Perl that have been hastily hacked together
with experimental code, when we can simply wait for the offending Perl
feature(s) to become stable.

While waiting, it doesn't take a lot of effort to create a new Perl
installation, for use by Interchange, that doesn't include the offending
experimental features.

Once threads are considered safe in Perl, Interchange could be modified
to test the Perl version before complaining about thread support.  At
that point, the version of Perl supplied by some Linux distros will be
safe to use - until they decide to prematurely compile in the next
experimental feature, that is.

Having said that, if adding a "use Linux::Pid qw(getpid getppid);" line
to the top of the Vend::Server module, and changing $$ to getpid(),
solves the problem (for both Linux and non-Linux systems) then that's
great.  I suspect that there are other issues too, and that further
investigation will not ultimately be worth the time.

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