cross-compiling glib, and threads

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

Allin Cottrell writes:
> checking for thread implementation... win32
> configure:
>    WARNING: I can't find the MACRO to enable thread safety on your
>    platform (normally it's _REENTRANT). I'll not use any flag on
>    compilation now, but then your programs might not work.
>    Please provide information on how it is done on your system.

The msvcrt.dll C runtime that one is supposed to use is always
thread-safe, no special macro needed. (The static Microsoft C library
has separate thread-safe and not versions, libc.lib and libcmt.lib.)

>    WARNING: the 'g_get_(user_name|real_name|home_dir|tmp_dir)'
>    functions will not be MT-safe during their first call because
>    there is no working 'getpwuid_r' on your system.

Well, there is no plain 'getpwuid' either, so big deal...

The above two warnings could be skipped on Win32, if someone feels
like submitting a suitable patch to configure.in

>    WARNING: the 'g_date_set_time' function will not be MT-safe
>    because there is no 'localtime_r' on your system.

This is real problem. Perhaps not any huge risk, though. Is there any
suitably licensed localtime implementation that could be copied into
GLib?

> How bad is this?  Is there a right way to enable thread safety, for 
> a cross mingw built with support for win32 threads?  Thanks for any 
> help.

My guess is that there might well be others, more serious multi-thread
issues in GLib on Windows.

--tml