[Haskell-cafe] Re: Why do ghc-built binaries use timer_create?

[Simon Marlow]

On 08/06/2009 22:10, Maurí­cio wrote:
>>  This comes from an issue in haskell-beginner, (...)
>>
>> For better or worse, this is something that people should not be
>> trying in the first place, (...)
>
> Sure! That's what I sugested in the original question. I'm actually
> just curious on why timer_create is used at all. This is probably
> just a small detail in program initialization, and maybe a link to
> some description of what happens on program initialization (specially
> ghc generated binaries) behind the naive user view would do it.

timer_create is used in the RTS to create a regular tick signal.  The 
tick signal is used for various things: thread pre-emption, profiling, 
deadlock detection, and idle-time GC,

Cheers,
	Simon