[Chicago-talk] Speaking of threading

[Greg Fast]

So, speaking of threading...

Does anyone have any practical experience with threaded 5.8?  The
general reaction I've gotten from most folk I've talked to has been
"perl threads are scary and I don't want to compile my own perl".

Are perl threads still scary?  I think the most scary parts (used to)
be that threads made things slower, sneaky unspecified sharing danger
deep inside perl, and non-core but common modules which are
non-threadsafe (and also a lack of a good way to tell if a given
module is threadsafe).  I think the first is solved and the second
more or less resolved, but have no idea on the third.

Is it reasonable yet to assume that an app with a "use threads" can be
run by most people running 5.8?  It looks like RedHat 8 ships with a
ithreads-happy perl (though RH8's perl is flaky in other ways), but
the default configure options still reccommend no thread support.

Any opinions?

--
Greg Fast
http://cken.chi.groogroo.com/~gdf/