Re: Multiple Threads in CLISP?

[Marcus Daniels <marcus@sysc.pdx.edu>]

>>>>> "Don" == Don Cohen <donc@ISI.EDU> writes:

Don>  When I originally asked about
Don> this Bruno seemed dead set against adding it.  I may have
Don> convinced him that it was a reasonable thing to add, and possibly
Don> even that it could be done with relatively low cost.

To me, LispView is not a reason to dive into this effort.  I'd be 
suprised if an external server wouldn't do the the job.  It would
probably be necessary to rewrite a small amount of code, but seeing
how LispView is history anyway, a person doing the work has no 
constraints to work within w.r.t. to hacking the sources.

Outside of ports of old software, and using IPC, I think the
remaining utility of threads doesn't make up for the large amount
of labor to make it happen.

Don> At this
Don> point, of course, he's trying not to work on clisp, and I'm not
Don> sure whether anyone else knows what pitfalls to watch out for.

Probably true, but it is funny how quickly these become apparent once
you get your feet wet.  Sure, threads would be a cool feature, but someone
who really *wants* it should be the person to do it.

Don> If anyone can think of a plausible plan for getting this done,
Don> I'm sure there are a lot of us out here who would like to hear
Don> it.

I fear the `demand' for this feature is an artifact of a dated and hopelessly
deluded Lisp-centric view of the world. 

Things I think are more pressing:
  o better language integration support
   (dynamic linking, interlanguage support).
  o higher performance, maybe runtime code generation
  o Know thy enemy:  talk to NT, 95, OS/2.