Re: anybody tried NPTL?

[Jun Sun <jsun@mvista.com>]

On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 09:08:56PM -0400, Kumba wrote:
> Jun Sun wrote:
> 
> > I am looking into porting NPTL to MIPS.  Just curious if
> > anybody has tried this before.
> > 
> > I notice there was a discussion about the ABI extension
> > for TLS (thread local storage) support.  Before that support
> > becomes a reality it seems one can still use NPTL with 
> > the help of additional system calls.
> > 
> > A rough search of latest glibc source shows there is
> > zero MIPS code for nptl.  A couple of other arches
> > are missing as well (such as ARM)
> > 
> > Jun
> 
> All I've heard about this is that some kernel changes are (still?) 
> needed, then just the glibc support along w/ TLS (Maybe compiler support?).
> 

TLS support requires ABI change, which involves work in gcc and binutils.
At current stage I think only a few arches have added TLS support.
MIPS is definitely not one of them.  Does anybody know about the current
status, for MIPS and other arches?

I think the ABI change and TLS support might take a long time to 
be ready.  It appears meanwhile NPTL can run without TLS, but would
need a couple of additional system calls that get and set thread
local area.

> I believe I heard reports that the glibc people were looking to 
> deprecate linuxthreads within a another release or two (but don't know 
> specifics or anything), so it sounds like NPTL should be something to 
> get working.
> 

That surely puts some urgency on this matter. :)

Jun