Re: [Bug-gnulib] Re: requirements of 'unlocked-io' module

[Bruno Haible]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> OTOH, the unlocked-io package sounds to me
> like something you should opt-in for, not opt-out from.  So couldn't
> packages that want the unlocked-io optimization go through extra work,
> instead of forcing packages that want to be thread safe to go through
> extra work?

The vast majority of GNU packages so far is single-threaded. We make things
easy for the majority; it's not a useful policy (in the sense of "worse is
better") to make things complicated for the majority just to serve a minority
and a theoretical argument.

In other areas it's already the case that thread-safety comes with extra
effort: you have to create lock objects, think about which lock protects
which object, declare some of your global variables as being __thread, etc.

Bruno