Re: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?

[Nic Ferrier]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     I think migrating Emacs towards a threading model is possible:
> 
>     - start with all primitive or ELisp functions assumed NOT thread-safe
> 
>     - allow threads to run, but any access to a function needs to be
>       synchronous.  At first, this will effectively make threads simple
>       switched tasks, and will probably make Emacs slower.
> 
> Many sections of Lisp code would need to have locking in order
> to run correctly with multiple threads.  For instance, everything
> of the form
> 
>   (setq global-list (cons foo global-list))
> 
> would need locking.

And anything doing similar things using dynamic scope as well (at
least when a variable isn't local to the function but from a
previously called function). So that's about everything.


Nic