Re: Multi-threaded mail, finally

[David Pickens <dsp rci rutgers edu>]

On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Peter Williams wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Nov 1999 03:59:06 David Pickens wrote:
> > OK,  first, the dislaimer!  :)
> > ...
> > tarball of two header files I've added.  I can't seem to get CVS's diff to
> > produce output that includes new files.
> > ...
> 
> The magic is 'cvs add libbalsa/threads.h src/threads.h ; cvs ci'
> 
> I did this. Perhaps you should consider renaming the files to
> help distinguish between them? Are they different?

Well, they refer to the same 'entities' and it might be possible to
'merge' them -- the variables have to be accessible from both 'sections'
of the code so that the threads can communicate their states (which
relates to the below).  On the other hand it might be useful to maintain
the distinction as the code develops -- references in libbalsa/threads.h
are likely to be a subset of the variables referred to in src/threads.h.

> Also -- defining the variables in the header file??? Methinks this
> a bad idea. I'm going to make them externs and put the definitions
> in the appropriate files.
> 

Yeah, this is a convenience for development purposes -- the variables have
to be globally accessible and persistent, and it seemed easier to put them
in one place while they were 'in flux' than it was to edit them
specifically, as 'extern' definitions, etc..  But that's a good point, and
it'll be on my list of things to do before committing anything.  Back to
the naming/difference issues -- if, from a design point of view, you want
to limit libbalsa's ability to easily access the global thread variables
to the ones that are appropriate to its own work (especially if the
threading is 'extended' to other sections of the code), than it might make
sense to maintain this distinction, and I'm not opposed to naming them
something different.  (Maybe it would be sufficient to add another line of
explanation in the comments of libbalsa/threads.h) 

(That and I forgot to mention that I'm going to re-work the way the pipe
receives messages.)

More importantly,

I've just now walked in the door from my Thanksgiving trip and I haven't
been able to more thoroughly 'test' it -- does it work on other people's
systems?:)

David