On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 11:49:41PM -0000, Justin Erenkrantz wrote: > jerenkrantz 02/04/30 16:49:41 > > Modified: . configure.in > Log: > Add --disable-atomics flag which will prevent APR from using its *own* > optimized code. On those OSes that properly support atomics from userspace, > we will use those no matter what the user specifies. Therefore, this change > only affects Solaris/Sparc - if --disable-atomics is passed, we will use > APR's generic code.
Since this doesn't really disable the atomics, please rename it. Something like --disable-optimized-atomics, or how about --enable-nonportable-atomics. I'd like to continue the discussion about non-portable binaries. Although I think it would be great if APR could handle atomics, I don't see that happening. Here are a couple problems that I see: 1) non-portable binaries: By default any binaries built on solaris 5.6/sparc will not run on older architectures, even when Sun supports newer operating systems on those architectures. (eg. 5.6 binaries don't work on some 5.7/5.8 machines.) 2) inefficient portable binaries: The whole point of the atomics code isn't just to do atomic operations, but to do them efficiently. Mutexes already give us atomic operations. If you specify the above flag, any part of your application that depends on efficient atomic operations will be making a false assumption. Since APR is not satisfying a requirement of the application, APR is not supporting atomics on that platform. I don't think it is APRs job to choose efficiency over portability, even at the binary executable level. -aaron
