From: storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)
Subject: Re: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?
Date: 04 Dec 2003 17:17:43 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m3ekvkv9p4.fsf@kfs-l.imdomain.dk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <x5smk0wub8.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>
David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>
> > I agree with all those. Converting a single-threaded application to
> > multithreaded, especially one as complex as Emacs, is a daunting
> > task. I think it's worthwhile.
>
> Not everything that is worthwhile gets done.
I don't really agree that this is worthwhile.
IMO, there are many other improvements that are more important than
multi-threading. Of course, if we had unlimited development _and_
_testing_ resources, it would be a nice thing to add, but I don't like
the idea of adding something _really complex_ like that which may
potentially de-stabilize emacs for a long time.
Even if you add multi-threading to Elisp, the applications need to be
made aware of that. How much -additional- work would be it be to
rework, say, GNUS to be multi-threaded?
Actually, a lot of code could already be improved today with better
use of process filters and sentinels, but that hasn't been done.
So even if we had multi-threading, I doubt that it would be widely
used.
> So changing Emacs' scopes to lexical is a prerequisite for any
> meaningful attempt at multithreading, anyway.
The lexical binding could be on a per-project or per-file basis,
rather than an over-all change to Elisp. That would allow projects
which requires multi-threading to use lexical scoping. _IF_ they
use dynamic scoping, it will result in unexplicable errors, but
the byte-compiler might warn against such uses, so we don't need
run-time checking.
IIRC the plans to add lexical scoping to Elisp is per-file, and
rumours is that there already exist patches to achieve this.
>
> Apart from giving people perhaps more enthusiasm for working on the
> lexical binding problem, I don't see what actually workable
> perspectives the multithreading buys us. Even then, it would be
> unfair to suggest people that if their desire is to get
> multithreading, that finishing some lexical binding project will make
> their goal come into easy reach. It is a prerequisite in my opinion,
> but quite far from making the ultimate goal easy to achieve.
I still wonder why people want multi-threading in Elisp -- IMHO, emacs
works just fine without it!
I admit (synchronous) GNUS is a problem, but except for that, I don't
really see that much code which will benefit vastly from being executed
by a multi-threaded emacs.
And for GNUS, you can just run two instances of emacs on your
multi-tasking OS.
Likewise, if you have some vast app writting in Elisp, just start
a second emacs to run it.
Problem solved!
--
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-12-04 16:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 133+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-11-16 21:46 Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs? Frank Schmitt
2003-11-17 0:49 ` Alex Schroeder
2003-11-17 4:06 ` Dhruva Krishnamurthy
2003-11-17 4:29 ` Miles Bader
2003-11-30 16:36 ` Kai Grossjohann
2003-11-30 18:01 ` Vinicius Jose Latorre
2003-11-30 18:39 ` Kai Grossjohann
2003-11-30 18:12 ` Benjamin Riefenstahl
2003-11-30 19:40 ` Nic Ferrier
2003-12-01 16:04 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-02 14:45 ` Ted Lemon
2003-12-02 15:48 ` Per Abrahamsen
2003-12-02 17:18 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-03 12:38 ` Per Abrahamsen
2003-12-02 17:27 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-02 18:53 ` Simon Josefsson
2003-12-03 13:03 ` Per Abrahamsen
2003-12-02 17:44 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-03 17:16 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-03 17:58 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-03 23:38 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-04 13:05 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-04 14:07 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-04 14:58 ` Nic Ferrier
2003-12-04 15:44 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-04 16:17 ` Kim F. Storm [this message]
2003-12-04 15:58 ` Nic Ferrier
2003-12-04 16:26 ` non-blocking sockets (was Re: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?) Nic Ferrier
2003-12-05 11:35 ` Kim F. Storm
2003-12-04 19:55 ` Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs? Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-04 20:30 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-04 20:58 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-04 22:49 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-05 12:17 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-05 13:06 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2003-12-05 14:44 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-07 23:55 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-08 16:54 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-08 17:09 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-08 18:10 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-08 22:02 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-08 18:25 ` What's the problem? (Was: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?) Luke Gorrie
2003-12-08 19:56 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-08 20:56 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-08 22:09 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-08 21:01 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-08 19:57 ` What's the problem? Simon Josefsson
2003-12-09 23:45 ` Juri Linkov
2003-12-10 0:58 ` Simon Josefsson
2003-12-10 4:35 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-10 5:38 ` Simon Josefsson
2003-12-10 5:51 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-10 6:34 ` Simon Josefsson
2003-12-10 7:19 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-11 14:12 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-11 23:09 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-12 23:55 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-13 16:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2003-12-13 17:29 ` Jan D.
2003-12-13 17:35 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-14 6:17 ` Eli Zaretskii
2003-12-14 11:55 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-14 14:27 ` Eli Zaretskii
2003-12-14 10:18 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-10 8:18 ` Eli Zaretskii
2003-12-11 14:45 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-10 15:36 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-11 1:46 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-12 23:54 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-11 18:39 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-11 18:48 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-12 3:27 ` Luke A. Olbrish
2003-12-12 3:57 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-13 15:17 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-13 4:08 ` Miles Bader
2003-12-13 23:14 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-14 13:12 ` Emacs kill buffer Camm Maguire
2003-12-09 19:28 ` What's the problem? (Was: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?) Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-09 22:02 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-10 0:13 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-10 1:41 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-10 2:49 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-12 0:44 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-10 0:45 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-10 2:55 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-09 19:32 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-09 22:13 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-10 15:16 ` Ted Zlatanov
[not found] ` <E1AUS6B-0006KH-Hq@fencepost.gnu.org>
[not found] ` <4ny8tjryy8.fsf@collins.bwh.harvard.edu>
[not found] ` <4nn09xm68c.fsf@collins.bwh.harvard.edu>
2003-12-13 23:15 ` What's the problem? Richard Stallman
2003-12-14 3:21 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-05 8:58 ` Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs? Thien-Thi Nguyen
2003-12-05 11:58 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-05 12:12 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-05 20:37 ` Luke A. Olbrish
2003-12-05 21:45 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-08 0:10 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-08 1:26 ` Luke A. Olbrish
2003-12-04 17:22 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-04 18:01 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-04 18:31 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-04 19:26 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-04 22:05 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-04 20:18 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-04 23:00 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-05 12:06 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-05 13:16 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-05 21:30 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-05 14:46 ` David Kastrup
2003-12-05 15:07 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-05 13:56 ` Benjamin Riefenstahl
2003-12-05 21:33 ` non-blocking auto-save (was: Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs?) Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-03 20:01 ` Are there plans for a multi-threaded Emacs? Nic Ferrier
2003-12-03 20:29 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-03 21:42 ` Robert J. Chassell
2003-12-04 7:33 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-04 15:37 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-04 18:06 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2003-12-04 7:33 ` Richard Stallman
2003-12-04 13:14 ` Ted Zlatanov
2003-12-04 15:41 ` Stefan Monnier
2003-12-06 20:58 ` Kai Grossjohann
2003-12-07 0:15 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2003-12-07 14:52 ` Kai Grossjohann
2003-12-07 16:58 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2003-12-07 4:16 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-12-07 14:53 ` Kai Grossjohann
2003-12-07 23:00 ` Martin Stjernholm
2003-11-17 19:31 ` Richard Stallman
2003-11-17 22:53 ` David Masterson
2003-11-18 5:57 ` Miles Bader
2003-11-20 19:19 ` David Masterson
2003-11-22 21:19 ` Richard Stallman
2003-11-18 6:52 ` John Wiegley
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