[PATCH libX11] config: Add an option to initialize threads by default.

Mark Kettenis mark.kettenis at xs4all.nl
Sun Feb 13 06:58:17 PST 2011


> Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:06:03 +0100
> From: Julien Cristau <jcristau at debian.org>
> 
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 15:12:29 +0200, Tiago Vignatti wrote:
> 
> > On 01/31/2011 01:13 PM, ext Julien Cristau wrote:
> > >On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:46:56 +0200, Rami Ylimäki wrote:
> > >
> > >>This change makes it possible to guard a system against a missing
> > >>XInitThreads call in X clients. One might argue that this is a client
> > >>problem and that all X clients should call XInitThreads if it's
> > >>possible that they could use Xlib from multiple threads. However,
> > >>experience has shown that it's just too easy for developers to
> > >>overlook the need for this call.
> > >>
> > >This change means that somebody developing their apps on a system with
> > >it on will never see they need to call XInitThreads(), and stuff will
> > >break when moving to an Xlib without that option.  I don't think that's
> > >a good idea.
> > 
> > I do agree with Julien in the sense that developers could become
> > lazy and in general won't care much anymore about initializing
> > thread support.
> > 
> > OTOH, if you pick a Qt application for instance, you will see that
> > it is close to impossible to track from a stack trace of 80
> > functions whether XInitThreads() is called properly or not. At the
> > same time, it's not a big deal to maintain the support Rami made in
> > libX11. So why not?
> > 
> Doesn't sound like you agree with me at all.  I just said why not, I'm
> not going to repeat it.  I understand what you're trying to solve, I
> disagree that an xlib configure option is the way to go.

I fully agree with Julien here.


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