From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=47724 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1P6JyZ-0003IM-FC for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:19:52 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1P6JyY-0001VN-JG for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:19:51 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:36365) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1P6JyY-0001VB-Cw for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:19:50 -0400 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:19:37 +0200 From: Gleb Natapov Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/3] Introduce threadlets Message-ID: <20101014091937.GE19207@redhat.com> References: <20101013152921.21735.87339.stgit@localhost6.localdomain6> <20101013153110.21735.16669.stgit@localhost6.localdomain6> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Stefan Hajnoczi Cc: Arun R Bharadwaj , qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 10:15:30AM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote: > I forgot to add that the semantics of cancellation make it difficult > to write correct user code. Every cancellation user needs to add > extra synchronization after the cancel call to handle the case where > the work is currently executing. > > This seems tricky to me and I suspect code using this interface will > be buggy. How about the following? > 1. Add a return value indicating that the work is currently executing > (this still requires the caller to add extra synchronization but is at > least explicit) versus work is no longer on the list. > 2. Add a flag to block until the work has been cancelled or completed. > This is useful to callers who are allowed to block. > In Linux kernel you usually have two function cancel() and cancel_sync(). Second variant waits for work completion. -- Gleb.