I would use mutexes in relatively standard ways, I think, to protect critical sections that access shared mutable state or external resources that may require some form of serialization. The usual approach of using a semaphore works fine, but it does require the aforementioned break manipulation song and dance to be entirely robust, and it would be nice to not have to worry about it.
> On Jan 18, 2020, at 04:46, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I appreciate the sentiment about prior art, but I'm already familiar with > both of those links and a significant part of my day job involves working on > concurrency frameworks. Specific use cases are more what I'm after. For > instance, what would you like to use mutexes for? > >> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 2:34 AM Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Oh, an addendum: I would be remiss not to mention the excellent paper on the >> design of Haskell’s asynchronous exception system, which provides both >> examples of problems in the wild and more general elaboration on both the >> design space and the particular point within it the authors chose for >> Haskell. The paper is “Asynchronous Exceptions in Haskell” by Marlow, Peyton >> Jones, Moran, and Reppy, and it is available here: >> >> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/asynch-exns.pdf >> >> Another thing worth reading is this recent blog post by Simon Marlow (the >> first author of the aforementioned paper) on asynchronous exceptions: >> >> https://simonmar.github.io/posts/2017-01-24-asynchronous-exceptions.html >> >>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 04:27, Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> I don’t personally have any problems with Racket’s semaphore interface as >>> it exists today. I think having the choice of whether or not to enable >>> breaks mostly makes sense as something the ambient environment controls, >>> not individual pieces of synchronization logic, since you usually want >>> control structures like `with-handlers` and `dynamic-wind` to be the things >>> that mask interrupts in the appropriate places. A hypothetical >>> `with-critical-section` form would be similar in that respect. This allows >>> a limited form of composability between concurrency constructs that is >>> otherwise hard to achieve. >>> >>> For the reasons I’ve already given, I think it would be more useful to >>> offer higher-level concurrency primitives like events, mutexes, etc., since >>> those could offer more structure based on the particular use case in >>> question. (Also, I realized Haskell’s MVars are basically just Racket >>> channels, though Racket’s channels don’t have a peek operation.) >>> >>> More generally, I think Haskell’s concurrency libraries are good prior art >>> here that would be worth looking at. Haskell’s “asynchronous exceptions” >>> are directly analogous to Racket’s breaks, though Haskell allows arbitrary >>> exceptions to be raised asynchronously rather than only allowing the more >>> restrictive interface of `thread-break`. Haskell’s `mask` operator >>> correspond’s to Racket’s `parameterize-break`. Even though the primitives >>> are essentially the same, Haskell’s libraries provide a much richer set of >>> higher-level abstractions, both in the standard library (see >>> Control.Exception and Control.Concurrent.*) and in other packages. >>> >>>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 04:04, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I am making a new concurrency abstraction, and I already have to work >>>> around the interface because it forces me to make this choice at every use >>>> site. What I was planning on doing was pushing this decision into the >>>> value itself, rather than the use site. So what if `make-semaphore` had a >>>> `#:break-handling-mode` argument that controlled whether or not waiting on >>>> that particular semaphore would either enable breaks, or check that breaks >>>> or disabled, or neither of those? >>>> >>>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 1:45 AM Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> No, I don’t think so, and here’s why: imagine a library provides an >>>>> abstraction that internally uses semaphores as events. The library uses >>>>> `semaphore-wait` to wait on the event. The client of this library now has >>>>> the option to disable breaks if it turns out this code is actually going >>>>> to be used inside a larger critical section, and they don’t want breaks >>>>> to be re-enabled by the library! They really want everything in the >>>>> critical section to keep breaks disabled. So in that case, the >>>>> break-agnostic behavior of `semaphore-wait` really is the right one. >>>>> >>>>> This is what I mean by semaphore’s being a low-level primitive, though. >>>>> There are lots of different behaviors one might want that could be better >>>>> served by higher-level abstractions that can make more assumptions about >>>>> how they’ll be used, but semaphores have to support all of them. I think >>>>> it makes sense that they provide the minimal set of behaviors needed to >>>>> implement those things—it keeps the building blocks as simple and modular >>>>> as possible. You can always implement the more complex behavior on top, >>>>> but it’d be annoying to discover you needed to work around the interface >>>>> trying to protect you from yourself while you’re implementing a new >>>>> concurrency abstraction. >>>>> >>>>>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 03:36, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Wouldn't you want to force the first thread to wait with >>>>>> semaphore-wait/enable-break in that case? Since if they're disabled then >>>>>> that thread can't be cooperatively terminated. If you use >>>>>> `semaphore-wait` it seems like you completely hand off control over >>>>>> whether breaks are enabled or not, which seems like something that use >>>>>> sites should care about one way or the other. What sort of >>>>>> semaphore-based communication would be truly indifferent to whether >>>>>> breaking is enabled? >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 1:28 AM Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> Actually, I change my mind, I can trivially think of a case where it’s >>>>>>> fine: if you’re just using a semaphore as an event. One thread waits >>>>>>> with `semaphore-wait`, another thread calls `semaphore-post`, and after >>>>>>> the count is decremented, it’s never re-incremented. It’s just used to >>>>>>> gate execution, not guard access to a resource. No need to disable >>>>>>> breaks here. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> (Also, an aside: I think your `car`/`cdr` example is different, because >>>>>>> `car`/`cdr`’s checks on pairs guard against memory corruption in the >>>>>>> Racket runtime, and Racket is a memory-safe language. A better >>>>>>> comparison would be that `car`/`cdr` don’t check whether or not their >>>>>>> argument is a proper list—the higher-level `first`/`rest` do that, >>>>>>> instead.) >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 03:21, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> It isn't clear to me either. I can't think of a use case for it, but >>>>>>>> I'm hoping either somebody else can or somebody can confirm that it's >>>>>>>> not a good API precedent. I'm trying to build some concurrency >>>>>>>> libraries and I'd like to be sure there isn't some important use case >>>>>>>> I'm missing. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 1:14 AM Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> >>>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> Like I said, it isn’t clear to me that all uses of `semaphore-wait` >>>>>>>>> when breaks are enabled are incorrect. You could argue that then you >>>>>>>>> should have a >>>>>>>>> `semaphore-wait/trust-me-even-though-breaks-are-enabled`, and sure, I >>>>>>>>> don’t think that would necessarily be bad. I just imagine the API >>>>>>>>> just wasn’t originally designed that way for some reason or another, >>>>>>>>> possibly simply because it wasn’t considered at the time. Maybe >>>>>>>>> Matthew can give a more satisfying answer, but I don’t know; I’m just >>>>>>>>> speculating. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 03:10, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I don't see how it has to do with semaphores being low-level. If >>>>>>>>>> waiting on a semaphore while breaks are enabled is almost certainly >>>>>>>>>> wrong, checking whether breaks are enabled and raising an error >>>>>>>>>> seems like a way more sensible default behavior than just silently >>>>>>>>>> doing something that's almost certainly wrong. If car and cdr can >>>>>>>>>> check their arguments by default, shouldn't semaphores guard against >>>>>>>>>> misuse too? >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 1:04 AM Alexis King <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> >>>>>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>>>> It is guaranteed to leave the semaphore in a consistent state, from >>>>>>>>>>> the perspective of the implementation of semaphores. No matter what >>>>>>>>>>> you do, you won’t ever corrupt a semaphore (assuming you’re not >>>>>>>>>>> using unsafe operations and assuming the runtime is not buggy). >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> But perhaps you mean inconsistent from the point of view of the >>>>>>>>>>> application, not from the point of view of the Racket runtime. In >>>>>>>>>>> that case, it’s true that when using semaphores as locks, using >>>>>>>>>>> them in a context where breaks are enabled is almost certainly >>>>>>>>>>> wrong. It’s not immediately clear to me that there aren’t any valid >>>>>>>>>>> uses of semaphores where you would want breaks to be enabled, but I >>>>>>>>>>> admit, I have no idea what they are. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Semaphores are low-level primitives, though, so I think it makes >>>>>>>>>>> some sense for them to just do the minimal possible thing. Perhaps >>>>>>>>>>> a library ought to offer a slightly more specialized “critical >>>>>>>>>>> section” abstraction a la Windows (or perhaps something like >>>>>>>>>>> Haskell’s MVars) that manages disabling interrupts in the critical >>>>>>>>>>> section for you. (Why doesn’t this exist already? My guess is that >>>>>>>>>>> most Racket programmers don’t worry about these details, since they >>>>>>>>>>> don’t call `break-thread` anywhere, and they want SIGINT to just >>>>>>>>>>> kill their process, anyway.) >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> On Jan 18, 2020, at 02:54, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> I do understand all of that, and you're right that "kill-safe" >>>>>>>>>>>> isn't what I meant. >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> What I'm confused about is why, if it's inherently not guaranteed >>>>>>>>>>>> to leave the semaphore in a consistent state, semaphore-wait >>>>>>>>>>>> attempts to work at all if breaks are enabled. Why not raise some >>>>>>>>>>>> helpful error like "it's unsafe to wait on a semaphore while >>>>>>>>>>>> breaks are enabled, did you forget to disable breaks?". What's the >>>>>>>>>>>> actual use case for calling semaphore-wait (and not >>>>>>>>>>>> semaphore-wait/enable-break) while breaks are enabled? >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 12:47 AM Alexis King >>>>>>>>>>>>> <lexi.lam...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>> Killing a thread is different from breaking a thread. Killing a >>>>>>>>>>>>> thread kills the thread unrecoverably, and no cleanup actions are >>>>>>>>>>>>> run. This usually isn’t what you want, but there’s always a >>>>>>>>>>>>> tension between these kinds of things: defensive programmers ask >>>>>>>>>>>>> “How do I make myself unkillable so I can safely clean up?” but >>>>>>>>>>>>> then implementors of a dynamic environment (like, say, DrRacket) >>>>>>>>>>>>> find themselves asking “How do I kill a runaway thread?” Assuming >>>>>>>>>>>>> you’re not DrRacket, you usually want `break-thread`, not >>>>>>>>>>>>> `kill-thread`. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> But perhaps you know that already, and your question is just >>>>>>>>>>>>> about breaking, so by “kill-safe” you mean “break-safe.” You ask >>>>>>>>>>>>> why `semaphore-break` doesn’t just disable breaking, but that >>>>>>>>>>>>> wouldn’t help with the problem the documentation alludes to. The >>>>>>>>>>>>> problem is that there’s fundamentally a race condition in code >>>>>>>>>>>>> like this: >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> (semaphore-wait sem) >>>>>>>>>>>>> ; do something important >>>>>>>>>>>>> (semaphore-post sem) >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> If this code is executed in a context where breaks are enabled, >>>>>>>>>>>>> it’s not break-safe whether or not `semaphore-wait` were to >>>>>>>>>>>>> disable breaks while waiting on the semaphore. As soon as >>>>>>>>>>>>> `semaphore-wait` returns, the queued break would be delivered, >>>>>>>>>>>>> the stack would unwind, and the matching `semaphore-post` call >>>>>>>>>>>>> would never execute, potentially holding a lock forever. So the >>>>>>>>>>>>> issue isn’t that the semaphore’s internal state gets somehow >>>>>>>>>>>>> corrupted, but that the state no longer reflects the value you >>>>>>>>>>>>> want. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> The right way to write that code is to disable breaks in the >>>>>>>>>>>>> critical section: >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> (parameterize-break #f >>>>>>>>>>>>> (semaphore-wait sem) >>>>>>>>>>>>> ; do something important >>>>>>>>>>>>> (semaphore-post sem)) >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> This eliminates the race condition, since a break cannot be >>>>>>>>>>>>> delivered until the `semaphore-post` executes (and synchronous, >>>>>>>>>>>>> non-break exceptions can be protected against via `dynamic-wind` >>>>>>>>>>>>> or an exception handler). But this creates a new problem, since >>>>>>>>>>>>> if a break is delivered while the code is blocked on the >>>>>>>>>>>>> semaphore, it won’t be delivered until the semaphore is >>>>>>>>>>>>> posted/unlocked, which may be a very long time. You’d really >>>>>>>>>>>>> rather just break the thread, since it hasn’t entered the >>>>>>>>>>>>> critical section yet, anyway. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> This is what `semaphore-wait/enable-break` is for. You can think >>>>>>>>>>>>> of it as a version of `semaphore-wait` that re-enables breaks >>>>>>>>>>>>> internally, inside its implementation, and it installs an >>>>>>>>>>>>> exception handler to ensure that if a break is delivered at the >>>>>>>>>>>>> worst possible moment (after the count has been decremented but >>>>>>>>>>>>> before breaks are disabled again), it reverses the change and >>>>>>>>>>>>> re-raises the break exception. (I have no idea if this is how >>>>>>>>>>>>> it’s actually implemented, but I think it’s an accurate model of >>>>>>>>>>>>> its behavior.) This does exactly what we want, since it ensures >>>>>>>>>>>>> that if we do enter the critical section, breaks are disabled >>>>>>>>>>>>> until we exit it, but we can still be interrupted if we’re >>>>>>>>>>>>> blocked waiting to enter it. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> So it’s not so much that there’s anything really special going on >>>>>>>>>>>>> here, but more that break safety is inherently anti-modular where >>>>>>>>>>>>> state is involved, and you can’t implement >>>>>>>>>>>>> `semaphore-wait/enable-break`-like constructs if you only have >>>>>>>>>>>>> access to the `semaphore-wait`-like sibling. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>> > On Jan 17, 2020, at 22:37, Jack Firth <jackhfi...@gmail.com> >>>>>>>>>>>>> > wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>>>>> > The docs for semaphores say this: >>>>>>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>>>>> > In general, it is impossible using only semaphore-wait to >>>>>>>>>>>>> > implement the guarantee that either the semaphore is >>>>>>>>>>>>> > decremented or an exception is raised, but not both. Racket >>>>>>>>>>>>> > therefore supplies semaphore-wait/enable-break (see >>>>>>>>>>>>> > Semaphores), which does permit the implementation of such an >>>>>>>>>>>>> > exclusive guarantee. >>>>>>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>>>>> > I understand the purpose of semaphore-wait/enable-break, but >>>>>>>>>>>>> > there's something about semaphore-wait that confuses me: why >>>>>>>>>>>>> > does it allow breaking at all? My understanding is that if >>>>>>>>>>>>> > breaks are enabled, semaphore-wait still tries to block and >>>>>>>>>>>>> > decrement the counter, even though a break at any time could >>>>>>>>>>>>> > destroy the integrity of the semaphore. Does that mean it's not >>>>>>>>>>>>> > kill-safe to use a semaphore as a lock? Wouldn't it be safer if >>>>>>>>>>>>> > semaphore-wait automatically disabled breaks while waiting? >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>> >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. 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