[Haskell-cafe] STM and unsafePerformIO/bracket

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Rob Leslie <rob at mars.org> writes:

> Is this expected behavior? I realize performing any IO within an STM
> transaction is inherently unsafe, but I am a little surprised that ‘bracket’
> fails here.
> 
> Is there a better way to do what I’m trying to accomplish? How can I provide
> a pure interface to my foreign function that will work within an STM
> transaction?

If your foreign function "depends on some global state in a way that
compromises thread safety", I would hestitate to simply tell the FFI that it
is pure.

Instead, you can break up your STM transaction into two pieces: A first part
that sets up the transaction and sets a guard variable so other transactions
cannot proceed until the second part is completed, then perform the FFI call,
then the second part of the transaction.  For example:

    atomically $ do
        m <- readTVar mutex
        check (not m)
        writeTVar m True
        ... do whatever STM setup work is needed here ...
    ffiCall
    atomically $ do
        ... do whatever STM cleanup work is needed here ...
        writeTVar m False

This way your ffiCall is conceptually within a larger transactional block.

John