[MIT-Scheme-devel] No Multi-threading?

[Matt Birkholz]

> From: Amit Saha <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:58:10 +0530
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Have been exploring 'mit-scheme' for a while now. The reference manual
> doesn't talk about multi-threading primitives for 'mit-scheme'.
> 
> What would it take to program multi-threaded servers and such using
> 'mit-scheme'?

Just refer to the runtime.pkg file.  The exports to the () package
from (runtime thread) will give you an idea of what should be in the
manual one day.

> Was thinking on the lines of adding such capabilities via using
> 'pthreads'.. Is it tangential?

Yep, depending on what "multi-threaded servers" are.  If those are
network servers, like your echo server, you should be able to spawn a
thread to handle each accepted connection.  At the moment, each thread
is a lightweight, Scheme thread.  The machine runs each for a
time-slice, multitaskingly.  Note: one machine -- one host processor.

If you are talking about multiprocessing (multiple machines running
concurrently on multiple processors, sharing one heap), you are going
to want to pick up where MultiScheme left off.  Unfortunately, Jim
Miller's PhD thesis

        MultiScheme: A Paralled Processing System Based on MIT
        Scheme", J. Miller, TR-402, MIT LCS, Sept 1987

does not seem to be available online.  Do you perchance have a BBN
Butterfly? :-)