Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add Threading Building Blocks

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de> skribis:

> There are a couple of things I'm not sure about:
>
> - should the examples be included per default or should they go into a
>   separate "doc" output together with the /doc directory?  Together they
>   take up about 10MB.

I would put them in “doc”.

> - the version number is only given as "4.3 Update 2 Current version" on
>   the download page.  I turned this into "4.3.2", but I'm not sure if
>   this is really equivalent or if we should rather use the datestamp on
>   the tarball (= "43_20141204")

“4.3.2” looks good.  If need be, the numbering scheme can always be
adjusted later.

> From 3e5e1e49893c73f8b9a565edcae5388f548dd13a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de>
> Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:12:31 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] gnu: Add Threading Building Blocks.
>
> * gnu/packages/tbb.scm: New file.
> * gnu-system.am (GNU_SYSTEM_MODULES): Add it.

[...]

> +                 (alist-cons-before
> +                  'build 'set-build-path
> +                  (lambda _
> +                    (substitute* "build/common.inc"
> +                      (("export tbb_build_prefix.+$")
> +                       "export tbb_build_prefix?=guix\n")))

Rather put this in ‘snippet’ (I think Mark made this comment on IRC.)

> +    (synopsis "The Threading Building Blocks library abstracts low-level
> +threading details")

What about “C++ library for parallel programming” instead?

> +    (description
> +     "Threading Building Blocks (TBB) is a C++ runtime library that abstracts
> +the low-level threading details necessary for optimal multi-core performance.
> +It uses common C++ templates and coding style to eliminate tedious threading
> +implementation work.
> +
> +TBB requires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading
> +models.  The applications you write are portable across platforms.  Since the
> +library is also inherently scalable, no code maintenance is required as more
> +processor cores become available.")

I would indeed remove the 2nd paragraph, and perhaps add something like
“It provides parallel loop constructs, asynchronous tasks,
synchronization primitives, atomic operations, and more.”

> +    ;; GPL2 with exceptions

Rather: “GPLv2 with run-time exception:
<https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/licensing#runtime-exception>”.

Thanks,
Ludo’.