non-blocking sockets (was Re: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?)

[Nic Ferrier]

Nic Ferrier <address@hidden> writes:

> Hmmm... maybe if most of the threading issues are with socket
> communication then better sentinels would be a good idea. Maybe a
> callback API for setting up and reading/writing to sockets would
> really useful. Such an API would be a doddle to write of course.

Doh!

Elisp 21 already has non-blocking sockets... I don't remember them
from the last time I did any socket stuff but they are there.

So one big win would be to convert as much network reliant code to
using non-blocking sockets which someone already said.


Since 'open-network-stream-nowait' returns nil when it's not
supported it seems fairly safe to add it to all networking
code. Maybe a new form is needed:

   open-network-stream-nowait-if-possible

which does an nbio connection if it can but otherwise a normal one.


If your system doesn't support nbio then you'll still have to wait
for Emacs threads for faster network connections   /8->


Nic