New Bound Threads Proposal

[Wolfgang Thaller]

Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

> The principal downside is that naïve users might end up with 
> unexpected thread switching for simple concurrent programs.

Yes. (However, for "simple concurrent programs" that cost should be 
negligible.)

> So the proposal boils down to:
> 	- yes, at the impl level the main thread is bound, as you suggest
> 	- but at the user level, the programmer can control whether or not
> 		his 'main' is bound
> 	- default is not-bound

Yes, sounds good.

> I think there's enough consensus already to shrink the bound-threads 
> proposal to one proposal with stuff about the main-thread variants.  
> Would you like to do that Wolfgang?

Yes, next week (high work load right now).

> Incidentally, we're about to fork the tree for GHC 6.0, so I don't 
> think we should aim to get the bound threads into that; but we plan 
> for 6.0 to be a consolidation release, with 6.2 following in a month 
> or two, rather than a year or two.  So aim for 6.2

OK, fine by me, I wouldn't be able to meet a tight deadline anyway.


Cheers,
Wolfgang