can you block a thread in GHC by its threadID?

[Simon Marlow]

On 22 June 2004 06:11, Bernard James POPE wrote:

> Ideally I'd like this function:
> 
>    blockThread :: ThreadId -> IO ()
> 
> and thus:
> 
>    unBlockThread :: ThreadId -> IO ()

Hmm, might be possible.  Can the blocked thread be woken up by an
exception?  (this is usually the case for blocked threads).

Note that if you block a thread and then drop all references to it, the
garbage collector will wake up the thread with a BlockedOnDeadMVar
exception.

I think I'd be tempted to call these functions {stop,continue}Thread to
avoid overloading the block/unblock terms any more.  Stop/continue is
used in Unix land too.

To implement this you'll need another StgTSOBlockReason state for
stopped threads.  Stopping already blocked threads might not be a
problem, since (in some cases at least) the blocking operation will be
retried when the thread is started again.  I'm not sure whether this is
always the case though.  Stopping a thread blocked on a foreign call
cannot be done.  Stopping a thread blocked on I/O or delay# will need to
remove the thread from the appropriate queue.

You'll need two new primops: stopThread#, continueThread#.  Take a look
at the implementation of killThread# for clues (in
ghc/rts/Exception.hc).  Don't forget to take into account the case when
a thread stops itself (that's the tricky one).  Let us know if you need
any more guidance...

Cheers,
	Simon