[pypy-dev] Suggestions Re: Problems Installing STM

[Andrew Francis]

Hi Armin:



________________________________
 From: Armin Rigo <arigo at tunes.org>
To: Andrew Francis <andrewfr_ice at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "pypy-dev at codespeak.net" <pypy-dev at codespeak.net> 
Sent: Thursday, January 5, 2012 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: [pypy-dev] Problems Installing STM
 
>Ah, sorry.  You need also to pass the option "--gc=none".  All real
>GCs are unsupported so far :-/

Great this works!

AF> I don't see rstm.begin_transaction() being called. Is this implicit with
AF> when a thread starts?

>Yes.

I interpret this as telling the underlying transaction manager that every variable the thread
uses is a part of a transaction, therefore log it (this is akin to starting a lock at the beginning of a programme and unlocking at the end).  This is not how I understand STM or transactions to work. In
this case, I think the Python way, explicit beats implicit is the better strategy. 

Does begin_transaction() work?

AF> In general, what sort of feedback are you looking for at this stage?

>It's unclear.  At this stage I'm looking for how we would really like
>the final STM-over-PyPy to look like, as this question is not clear at
>all.  See my other mails about this topic...

Yes I am reading the other email messages. However I feel commenting on existing work belongs in its own separate thread.

Some comments and Questions:

1) I am starting to look at the rstm library, running some of the code. Bench examples emit logging data. I think it would be useful to have a logging facility to see what the underlying STM mechanism is doing.  I have logging for my join pattern implementation. It helped me understand how patterns *worked* (and whether they were working).

2) Looking at Haskell and rstm examples and looking at the targetdemo example, I am not sure how you tell the STM which variables (i.e., the Anchor) are of interest?

Cheers,
Andrew
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