New snapshot 2003-09-04

New snapshot 2003-09-04

[Ross Johnson]

There is now a new snapshot 2003-09-04 available at:

ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/pthreads-win32/

and eventually at Red Hat mirrors - see the link on the project page at
http://sources.redhat.com/pthreads-win32/#download

As usual, it's available as:

- a complete self-unpacking Zip file
- tar.gz file of source files only
- separated source files
- pre-built dll and lib files with necessary include files (in the 
'dll-latest' sub-folder)

This snapshot is primarily in response to:
    http://sources.redhat.com/ml/pthreads-win32/2003/msg00086.html

This is perhaps a slightly beta snapshot although it passes the full 
test suite, including new tests
for the following new feature:

New feature - Cancelation of/by Win32 (non-POSIX) threads
---------------------------------------------------------
Since John Bossom's original implementation, the library has allowed 
non-POSIX
initialised threads (Win32 threads) to call pthreads-win32 routines and
therefore interact with POSIX threads. This is done by creating an 
on-the-fly
POSIX thread ID for the Win32 thread that, once created, allows fully
reciprical interaction. This did not extend to thread cancelation (async or
deferred). Now it does.

Any thread can be canceled by any other thread (Win32 or POSIX) if the 
former
thread's POSIX pthread_t value is known. It's TSD destructors and POSIX
cleanup handlers will be run before the thread exits with an exit code of
PTHREAD_CANCELED (retrieved with GetExitCodeThread()).

This allows a Win32 thread to, for example, call POSIX CV routines in 
the same way
that POSIX threads would/should, with pthread_cond_wait() cancelability and
cleanup handlers (pthread_cond_wait() is a POSIX cancelation point).

By adding cancelation, Win32 threads should now be able to call all POSIX
threads routines that make sense including semaphores, mutexes, condition
variables, read/write locks, barriers, spinlocks, tsd, cleanup push/pop,
cancelation, pthread_exit, scheduling, etc.

Note that these on-the-fly 'implicit' POSIX thread IDs are initialised 
as detached
(not joinable) with deferred cancelation type. The POSIX thread ID will 
be created
automatically by any POSIX routines that need a POSIX handle (unless the 
routine
needs a pthread_t as a parameter of course). A Win32 thread can discover 
it's own
POSIX thread ID by calling pthread_self(), which will create the handle if
necessary and return the pthread_t value.

Regards.
Ross