Re: [RFC] kern: simple futex for gnumach (version 10)

[Richard Braun]

On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 12:34:32PM +0100, Richard Braun wrote:
> > +static struct rbtree futex_tree;
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2013-12/msg00545.html :
> "Personally, I'd use a per-task red-black tree".
>                        ^^^^^^^^
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2013-12/msg00546.html :
> "To finish with, the more I think about it, the less I understand why
> there is a need for futex objects in the first place. Instead of
> dynamically allocating such structures, it probably makes more sense
> to use the addresses of the physical page descriptors instead."
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

After some thinking, this would actually not work, as physical pages can
be paged out. You can use a (VM object, offset) pair instead, but you
have to deal with private futexes, which should probably use a
(VM map, address) pair.

So, you actually need a global, shared container for process shared
futexes, and per-task containers for private ones. We also need to make
sure nothing bad happens to an (object, offset) pair when, say,
copy-on-write is performed by the VM system... All this looks quite
tricky to me, and certainly not a "small hack entry" :-/.

-- 
Richard Braun