[Haskell-cafe] Thread blocked indefinitely problem when playing with signals and MVar on Windows

[Olivier Boudry]

Hi all,

I'm playing with signal handlers on Win32. I found a good post on
signal handlers but it works with System.Posix.Signals which on Win32
is empty.

Blog is here: http://therning.org/magnus/archives/285

I tried to adapt this code to GHC.ConsoleHandler, the Win32
counterpart of System.Posix.Signals.

The code:
=====================================
module Main where

--import System.Posix.Signals
import GHC.ConsoleHandler
import Control.Concurrent
import Control.Concurrent.MVar
import System

-- ControlC increments counter
handler :: MVar (Int, Bool) -> ConsoleEvent -> IO ()
handler mi ControlC = do
    (i, exit) <- takeMVar mi
    putStrLn "In ControlC handler"
    putMVar mi ((i + 1), False)

-- Break sets Bool to True to stop application
handler mi Break = do
    (i, exit) <- takeMVar mi
    putStrLn "In Break handler"
    putMVar mi (i, True)

-- Ignore other signals
handler _ _ = do return ()

doNothing :: MVar (Int, Bool) -> IO ()
doNothing mi = do
    threadDelay 1000000
    (i, exit) <- takeMVar mi
    if exit then do
        putStrLn "Good bye!"
        exitWith ExitSuccess
        else do
            putStrLn $ "Repeating " ++ (show i)

main :: IO ()
main = do
    mi <- newMVar (0, False)
    installHandler (Catch $ handler mi)
    sequence_ $ repeat $ doNothing mi
=====================================

It compiles but when run I receive this:
Repeating 0
SignalsText.exe: <<loop>>

First iteration is executed but then it gets trapped in what looks
like a dead lock.

If I remove the installation of the signal handler to just have an
infinite loop (comment out installHandler ...) I get this:
Repeating 0
SignalsText.exe: thread blocked indefinitely

Without the signal handler the code uses only the main and doNothing
function and I can't figure out what causes this to block? Something
to do with my use of MVar, but what??? Lazy evaluation?

Thanks for any advice,

Olivier.