On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 10:43:53AM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > I've just been playing with threads and I noticed at execution
> > time that Thread.kill is not implemented by the posix-compiled
> > version of the library. I used this flag because I thought that
> > it would be faster (please correct me if I'm wrong), and there
> > was no mention that Thread.kill would not be implemented.
> > By looking at the sources, I learned that the reason is
> > "problems with cleanup handlers on several platforms".
> > That's fine with me, but I would like to compile my
> > program :)
> 
> The documentation should definitely be updated to mention that
> Thread.kill is not only unavailable with system threads, but also
> deprecated and definitely not advised.  

Why not remove it entirelly ?

It is only confusing to have kill, but advice not to use it, and have it
only working in some conditions (caml threads) ?

> Being able to terminate any thread at any time, without cooperation
> from the thread, is extremely dangerous: what if the killed thread was
> holding mutexes?  (I think this has been discussed recently on this
> list.)  For this reason, thread APIs either provide a low-level "kill"
> operation and strongly adivse not to use it (Win32, Java), or they
> provide a more controlled "cancellation" mechanism (POSIX) that is
> slightly less risky, but doesn't (currently) map well to Caml threads.
> 
> So: don't kill threads.  Let them live a long and happy life :-)

Well, the idea is to interactively kill threads that loop forever or
something else such.

I know you adviced me to have a the thread check each time if it can
continue living, and stop if it is told not so, and this is what i will
be doind, but what about having a thread function available in the
thread library that does this in a somewhat standardized way ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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