Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn
Yes, all the synchronization and casting pretty much mandates 
that shared data must be behind some kind of abstraction for 
better ergonomics and better correctness too.


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 14/7/20 10:45, Dominikus Dittes Scherkl wrote:


This is generally true. Avoid sharing many variables!
Tasks should be as independent from each other as possible. Anything 
else is bad design doomed to run into problems sooner or later.
Also there is really almost never a good reason to share whole classes 
or nested structures.


Sometimes you want to encapsulate your "shared" logic.

For instance, a class (or struct) might be a thread-safe container 
responsible for storing shared data across multiple threads. Each thread 
would get a shared reference to the container, and all the 
synchronization would be managed internally by that class.


In these cases I just marked the whole container class as `shared` 
instead of having to mark every single method, in fact there were no 
non-shared methods at all.


Now I know that the members shouldn't be shared, just the methods, but 
the difference wasn't clear to me until now, because it only shows when 
you cast shared away from `this`.


If you only instantiate shared variables, all the members become 
automatically shared as well, even if they originally weren't. So far I 
was just removing shared from the individual members, so I didn't notice:


```
import std;

class S {
SysTime a;
shared SysTime b;

synchronized shared void setIt(SysTime t) {
// What I used to do
cast () a = t; // Here you need to cast away shared anyway
cast () b = t; // so it doesn't make any difference.

// What I'll do from now on
with(cast() this) { // You only notice the difference when you 
cast away `shared` from `this`

a = t;
// b = t; // FAILS
}
}
}
```


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Dominikus Dittes Scherkl via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Tuesday, 14 July 2020 at 07:05:43 UTC, Arafel wrote:
*However*, for this to work, you shouldn't use `shared` member 
variables unless absolutely necessary, much less whole `shared` 
classes/structs


This is generally true. Avoid sharing many variables!
Tasks should be as independent from each other as possible. 
Anything else is bad design doomed to run into problems sooner or 
later.
Also there is really almost never a good reason to share whole 
classes or nested structures.


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 14/7/20 8:13, Kagamin wrote:

---
import std;

shared class TimeCount {
 void startClock() {
     auto me = cast()this;
     me.startTime = Clock.currTime;
 }
 void endClock() {
     auto me = cast()this;
     me.endTime = Clock.currTime;
 }
 void calculateDuration() {
     auto me = cast()this;
     me.elapsed = me.endTime - me.startTime;
 }

 private:
 SysTime startTime;
 SysTime endTime;
 Duration elapsed;
}
---
And this is shorter than your unshared member specification.


It won't work if you need to do it inside a struct instead of a class, 
because you'll get a copy:


```
import std;

shared struct S {
void setA (int _a) {
auto me = cast() this;
me.a = _a;
}
int a;
}

void main() {
shared S s;
writeln("Before: ", s.a); // 0
s.setA(42);
writeln("After: ", s.a); // still 0
}
```

That said, `with (cast() this) { ... }` *will* work, because there's no 
copying. This is a really nice idiom that I didn't know and that I'll 
use from now on.


*However*, for this to work, you shouldn't use `shared` member variables 
unless absolutely necessary, much less whole `shared` classes/structs, 
and only declare the individual methods as shared, because casting away 
`shared` from `this` will only peel the external layer:


```
import std;

struct S {
SysTime a;
shared SysTime b;

synchronized shared void setIt(SysTime t) {
with(cast() this) {
a = t;
// b = t; // FAILS, `b` is still `shared` even for 
non-shared `S`

}
}
}
```

Also, I'm pretty sure there are still corner cases when you have to nest 
data structures, but so far this strategy seems good enough.


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn

---
import std;

shared class TimeCount {
synchronized void startClock() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.startTime = Clock.currTime;
}
synchronized void endClock() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.endTime = Clock.currTime;
}
synchronized void calculateDuration() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.elapsed = me.endTime - me.startTime;
}

private:
SysTime startTime;
SysTime endTime;
Duration elapsed;
}
---
forgot synchronized attribute


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 14/7/20 8:05, Kagamin wrote:

On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 07:26:06 UTC, Arafel wrote:
That's exactly why what I propose is a way to *explicitly* tell the 
compiler about it, like @system does for safety.


With __gshared you can opt out from sharing safety, then you're back to 
old good C-style multithreading.


That's apples and oranges.

I do agree in principle with the idea of `shared`, I just want a way to 
tell the compiler that `shared` doesn't apply *within a given block*, if 
possible also only for some specific variables, because I have already 
taken care of the synchronization, that's exactly what the system tries 
to promote.


__gshared on the other hand is just dispensing with the `shared` system 
altogether and giving up the protections it offers. Furthermore it only 
works for global objects and static variables/members [1], so its use is 
limited.


[1]: https://dlang.org/spec/attribute.html#gshared


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn

---
import std;

shared class TimeCount {
void startClock() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.startTime = Clock.currTime;
}
void endClock() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.endTime = Clock.currTime;
}
void calculateDuration() {
auto me = cast()this;
me.elapsed = me.endTime - me.startTime;
}

private:
SysTime startTime;
SysTime endTime;
Duration elapsed;
}
---
And this is shorter than your unshared member specification.


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-14 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 07:26:06 UTC, Arafel wrote:
That's exactly why what I propose is a way to *explicitly* tell 
the compiler about it, like @system does for safety.


With __gshared you can opt out from sharing safety, then you're 
back to old good C-style multithreading.


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-13 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 13/7/20 14:18, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


cast() will remove as little as possible, but for most cases, including 
classes and struts, this means the entire tree referenced is now unshared.




Yeah, but the whole lvalue cast looks just non-obvious and ugly to me:

```
cast() foo = bar;
```

It looks like an ad-hoc hack, and I haven't seen it used anywhere else. 
I don't even think it's well-documented (it's probably somewhere in the 
grammar, without much explanation of what it does or what it would be 
useful for). I know I had to asks in the forums because I couldn't even 
assign to a shared SysTime!



An AA does something really useless, which I didn't realize.

If you have a shared int[int], and use cast() on it, it becomes 
shared(int)[int]. Which I don't really understand the point of.


But in any case, casting away shared is doable, even if you need to type 
a bit more.




Sure, it's doable, but the readability suffers a lot, and also it's just 
too error-prone.


The intent is to cast away shared on the ENTIRE aggregate, and then use 
everything in the aggregate as unshared.


I can imagine something like this:

ref T unshared(T)(return ref shared(T) item) { return *(cast(T*)); }

with(unshared(this)) {
     // implementation using unshared things
}

I wasn't suggesting that for each time you access anything in a shared 
object, you need to do casting. In essence, it's what you are looking 
for, but just opt-in instead of automatic.




Yes, that would be nice as a workaround, although ideally I'd like a 
more comprehensive and general solution.


Sometimes you don't need to strip shared only from `this`, sometimes 
only it's only from some parts, and sometimes also from some external 
objects.


To be clear, I'm so far assuming it's explicitly opt-in by the user.

I wouldn't mind seen something done with `synchronized` classes, but 
that's probably a much more complex issue.




Yeah, this looks suspiciously like the with statement above. We seem to 
be on the same page, even if having different visions of who should 
implement it.




I think we're in "violent agreement" territory here :-)

I honestly would be happy if there were a reliable library solution that 
worked even now, because so far for any non-trivial situation I have to 
spend more time casting from and to shared than doing the actual work, 
and the code becomes a mess to follow afterwards.




You are better off separating the implementation of the shared and 
unshared parts. That is, you have synchronized methods, but once you are 
synchronized, you cast away shared and all the implementation is normal 
looking.


Compare:

class TimeCount {
     public:
     void startClock() {
     startTime = Clock.currTime;
     }
     synchronized void startClock() shared {
    (cast()this).startClock();
     }
     void endClock() {
     endTime = Clock.currTime;
     }
     synchronized void endClock() shared {
    (cast()this).endClock();
     }
     void calculateDuration() {
     timeEllapsed = endTime - startTime;
     }
     synchronized void calculateDuration() shared {
     (cast()this).calculateDuration();
     }

     private:
     SysTime startTime;
     SysTime endTime;
     Duration timeEllapsed;
}

I would imagine a mixin could accomplish a lot of this, but you have to 
be careful that the locking properly protects all the data.


A nice benefit of this approach is that no locking is needed when the 
instance is thread-local.




Just thinking of the amount of boilerplate makes my head spin. Even if a 
mixin could somehow automate it, I still think there should be a 
"proper" way to do it, without that much hacking around.


Furthermore, In my case I'm trying to do fine-grained locking, and I 
might have to get different locks within the same function. Of course I 
could split the function, but it would be constantly interrupting the 
"natural flow" of what I'm trying to do, and it would become so much 
harder to understand and to reason about.


And these functions wouldn't make sense by themselves, would probably 
need access to locals from the parent function, and would only be called 
from one place... so I see them as a kind of anti-pattern.


Also, `shared` and `synchronized` would become in this case pretty much 
useless then when applied to a class / structure.




I think we may have been battling a strawman here. I assumed you were 
asking for synchronized to be this mechanism, when it seems you actually 
were asking for *any* tool. I just don't want the locking to be 
conflated with "OK now I can safely access any data because something 
was locked!". It needs to be opt-in, because you understand the risks.


I think those tools are necessary for shared to have a good story, 
whether the compiler implements it, or a library does.


-Steve


I totally agree with this. As I mentioned, I wouldn't mind 
`synchronized` classes becoming apt for the trivial cases (i.e. you just 
have a 

Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-13 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 7/13/20 3:26 AM, Arafel wrote:

On 13/7/20 3:46, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

On 7/11/20 6:15 AM, Arafel wrote:


What I really miss is some way of telling the compiler "OK, I know 
what I'm doing, I'm already in a critical section, and that all the 
synchronization issues have been already managed by me".


You do. It's a cast.



Yes, and that's what I'm doing (although with some helper function to 
make it look slightly less ugly), but for non-reference types I have to 
do it every single time you use the variables, and it's annoying for 
anything beyond trivial.


There's no way to avoid it, because at best you can get a pointer that 
will be enough for most things, but it will show for instance if you 
want to use it as a parameter to another function.


Also, with more complex data types like structs and AAs where not only 
the AA itself, but also the members, keys and values become shared, it's 
*really* annoying, because there's no easy way you can get a "fully" 
non-shared reference, because `cast()` will *often* only remove the 
external shared layer (I'm not sure it's always the case, it has happen 
semi-randomly to me, and what it's worse, I don't know the rules for that).


cast() will remove as little as possible, but for most cases, including 
classes and struts, this means the entire tree referenced is now unshared.


An AA does something really useless, which I didn't realize.

If you have a shared int[int], and use cast() on it, it becomes 
shared(int)[int]. Which I don't really understand the point of.


But in any case, casting away shared is doable, even if you need to type 
a bit more.




Also, it becomes a real pain when you have to send those types to 
generic code that is not "share-aware".


And for basic types, you'll be forced to use atomicOp all the time, or 
again resort to pointers.


The intent is to cast away shared on the ENTIRE aggregate, and then use 
everything in the aggregate as unshared.


I can imagine something like this:

ref T unshared(T)(return ref shared(T) item) { return *(cast(T*)); }

with(unshared(this)) {
// implementation using unshared things
}

I wasn't suggesting that for each time you access anything in a shared 
object, you need to do casting. In essence, it's what you are looking 
for, but just opt-in instead of automatic.


Within this block, shared would implicitly convert to non-shared, and 
the other way round, like this (in a more complex setup with a RWlock):


```
setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
 synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) critical_section {  // From this 
point I can forget about shared

 time = t;
 }
}
```


This isn't checkable by the compiler.



That's exactly why what I propose is a way to *explicitly* tell the 
compiler about it, like @system does for safety. I used 
`critical_section`, but perhaps `@critical_section` would have been 
clearer. Here is be a more explicit version specifying the variables to 
which it applies (note that you'd be able to use "this", or leave it 
empty and have it apply to everything):


```
void setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
     synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) {
     @critical_section(time) {  // From this point I can forget 
about shared

     time = t;
     }
     }
}
```


Yeah, this looks suspiciously like the with statement above. We seem to 
be on the same page, even if having different visions of who should 
implement it.


Here it doesn't make a difference because the critical section is a 
single line (so it's even longer), but if you had to use multiple 
variables like that in a large expression, it'd become pretty much 
impossible to understand without it:


```
import std;

synchronized shared class TimeCount { // It's a synchronized class, so 
automatically locking

 public:
 void startClock() {
     cast() startTime = Clock.currTime; // Here I have to cast the 
lvalue
     // startTime = cast(shared) Clock.currTime; // Fails because 
opAssign is not defined for shared

 }
 void endClock() {
     cast() endTime = Clock.currTime; // Again unintuitively casting 
the lvalue

 }
 void calculateDuration() {
     timeEllapsed = cast (shared) (cast() endTime - cast() 
startTime); // Here I can also cast the rvalue, which looks more natural

 }

 private:
 SysTime startTime;
 SysTime endTime;
 Duration timeEllapsed;
}
```

Non-obvious lvalue-casts all over the place, and even `timeEllapsed = 
cast (shared) (cast() end - cast() start);`.


And that one is not even too complex... I know in this case you can 
reorganize things, but it was just an example of what happens when you 
have to use multiple shared variables in an expression.


You are better off separating the implementation of the shared and 
unshared parts. That is, you have synchronized methods, but once you are 
synchronized, you cast away shared and all the implementation is normal 
looking.


Compare:

class TimeCount {
public:
 

Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-13 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 13/7/20 3:46, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

On 7/11/20 6:15 AM, Arafel wrote:


What I really miss is some way of telling the compiler "OK, I know 
what I'm doing, I'm already in a critical section, and that all the 
synchronization issues have been already managed by me".


You do. It's a cast.



Yes, and that's what I'm doing (although with some helper function to 
make it look slightly less ugly), but for non-reference types I have to 
do it every single time you use the variables, and it's annoying for 
anything beyond trivial.


There's no way to avoid it, because at best you can get a pointer that 
will be enough for most things, but it will show for instance if you 
want to use it as a parameter to another function.


Also, with more complex data types like structs and AAs where not only 
the AA itself, but also the members, keys and values become shared, it's 
*really* annoying, because there's no easy way you can get a "fully" 
non-shared reference, because `cast()` will *often* only remove the 
external shared layer (I'm not sure it's always the case, it has happen 
semi-randomly to me, and what it's worse, I don't know the rules for that).


Also, it becomes a real pain when you have to send those types to 
generic code that is not "share-aware".


And for basic types, you'll be forced to use atomicOp all the time, or 
again resort to pointers.


So yes, it's not impossible, but it's really, really inconvenient, to 
the point of making `shared` almost unusable beyond the most simple 
cases. In fact, I would be happy if it had to take a list of variables, 
and ignore `shared` just for them (and their members):


Within this block, shared would implicitly convert to non-shared, and 
the other way round, like this (in a more complex setup with a RWlock):


```
setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
 synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) critical_section {  // From this 
point I can forget about shared

 time = t;
 }
}
```


This isn't checkable by the compiler.



That's exactly why what I propose is a way to *explicitly* tell the 
compiler about it, like @system does for safety. I used 
`critical_section`, but perhaps `@critical_section` would have been 
clearer. Here is be a more explicit version specifying the variables to 
which it applies (note that you'd be able to use "this", or leave it 
empty and have it apply to everything):


```
void setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) {
@critical_section(time) {  // From this point I can forget 
about shared

time = t;
}
}
}
```

Here it doesn't make a difference because the critical section is a 
single line (so it's even longer), but if you had to use multiple 
variables like that in a large expression, it'd become pretty much 
impossible to understand without it:


```
import std;

synchronized shared class TimeCount { // It's a synchronized class, so 
automatically locking

public:
void startClock() {
cast() startTime = Clock.currTime; // Here I have to cast the 
lvalue
// startTime = cast(shared) Clock.currTime; // Fails because 
opAssign is not defined for shared

}
void endClock() {
cast() endTime = Clock.currTime; // Again unintuitively casting 
the lvalue
}
void calculateDuration() {
timeEllapsed = cast (shared) (cast() endTime - cast() 
startTime); // Here I can also cast the rvalue, which looks more natural

}

private:
SysTime startTime;
SysTime endTime;
Duration timeEllapsed;
}
```

Non-obvious lvalue-casts all over the place, and even `timeEllapsed = 
cast (shared) (cast() end - cast() start);`.


And that one is not even too complex... I know in this case you can 
reorganize things, but it was just an example of what happens when you 
have to use multiple shared variables in an expression.


You could accidentally end up referencing shared things as unshared when 
the lock is unlocked. If you remove shared, you need to know and 
understand the consequences, and the compiler can't help there, because 
the type qualifier has been removed, so it's not aware of which things 
are going to become shared after the lock is gone.


-Steve


Well, it's meant as a low level tool, similar to what @system does for 
memory safety. You can't blame the compiler if you end up doing 
something wrong with your pointer arithmetic or with your casts from and 
to void* in your @system code, can you?


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-12 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 7/11/20 1:03 AM, Kagamin wrote:

Steven's solution isn't good in the general case


Right, you need to know that SysTime is actually a value type, and so it 
can be implicitly copied without problems with aliasing.


In fact, the cast isn't needed to ensure there is no lingering aliasing. 
I can tell it's a value type because:


const SysTime x;
SysTime y;
y = x; // ok.

Likewise, I technically could just copy to a shared one, but the problem 
is that the actual act of writing the field is subject to memory 
problems. It has nothing to do with the SysTime internals.


To make the solution more "correct" you could mark the incoming SysTime 
as const.


-Steve


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-12 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 7/11/20 6:15 AM, Arafel wrote:


Because the system don't know if just this lock is enough to protect 
this specific access. When you have multiple locks protecting multiple 
data, things can become messy.


Yes.



What I really miss is some way of telling the compiler "OK, I know what 
I'm doing, I'm already in a critical section, and that all the 
synchronization issues have been already managed by me".


You do. It's a cast.

Within this block, shared would implicitly convert to non-shared, and 
the other way round, like this (in a more complex setup with a RWlock):


```
setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
 synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) critical_section {  // From this 
point I can forget about shared

     time = t;
 }
}
```


This isn't checkable by the compiler.

You could accidentally end up referencing shared things as unshared when 
the lock is unlocked. If you remove shared, you need to know and 
understand the consequences, and the compiler can't help there, because 
the type qualifier has been removed, so it's not aware of which things 
are going to become shared after the lock is gone.


-Steve


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-11 Thread Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 10/7/20 20:30, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:35:56 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
Mark your setTime as shared, then cast away shared (as you don't need 
atomics once it's locked), and assign:


synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
    (cast()this).time = t;
}


I know I can make it work by casting, my question is:

we had a lock on the owning shared object already, WHY we still need the 
cast to make it compile.




Because the system don't know if just this lock is enough to protect 
this specific access. When you have multiple locks protecting multiple 
data, things can become messy.


What I really miss is some way of telling the compiler "OK, I know what 
I'm doing, I'm already in a critical section, and that all the 
synchronization issues have been already managed by me".


Within this block, shared would implicitly convert to non-shared, and 
the other way round, like this (in a more complex setup with a RWlock):


```
setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
	synchronized(myRWMutex.writer) critical_section {  // From this point I 
can forget about shared

time = t;
}
}
```

As a workaround, I have implemented the following trivial helpers:

```
mixin template unshareThis() {
alias S = typeof(this);
static if (is(S C == shared C)) {}
static if (is(S == class) || is(S == interface)) {
C unshared = cast(C) this;
} else static if (is(S == struct)) {
C* unshared = cast(C*) 
} else {
static assert(0, "Only classes, interfaces and structs can be 
unshared");

}
}


pragma(inline, true);
ref unshare(S)(return ref S s) {
static if (is (S C == shared C)) { }
return *(cast(C*) );
}
```

With them you should be able to do either:

```
synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
mixin unshareThis;
unshared.time = t;
}
```
(useful if you need multiple access), or:

```
synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
time.unshare = t;
}
```


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:18:25 UTC, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 08:48:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 05:12:06 UTC, mw wrote:

looks like we still have to cast:
as of 2020, sigh.


Why not?


Because cast is ugly.


Implicitly escaping thread local data into shared context is much 
uglier than a cast. D disallows such implicit sharing, and thus 
ensures existence of thread local data on the language level. 
SysTime wasn't designed to be shared and due to this is 
incompatible with sharing by default, which enforces the promise 
that SysTime must be thread local, because it wasn't designed to 
be shared.


synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
(cast()this).time = t;
}
Steven's solution isn't good in the general case, because it 
still puts thread local data in shared context, which itself is a 
problem, because it makes thread local data implicitly shared, 
and when you work with such implicitly shared thread local data, 
you can't assume it's thread local, because it might be escaped 
into shared context. In this case the language prevented implicit 
sharing of thread local data (this is what shared does and does 
it well contrary to the popular myth that shared is broken).


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-learn
On Friday, July 10, 2020 12:30:16 PM MDT mw via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:35:56 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer
>
> wrote:
> > Mark your setTime as shared, then cast away shared (as you
> > don't need atomics once it's locked), and assign:
> >
> > synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
> >
> > (cast()this).time = t;
> >
> > }
>
> I know I can make it work by casting, my question is:
>
> we had a lock on the owning shared object already, WHY we still
> need the cast to make it compile.

Because the type system has no way of knowing that access to that shared
object is currently protected, and baking that into the type system is
actually very difficult - especially if you don't want to be super
restrictive about what is allowed.

The only scheme that anyone has come up thus far with which would work is
TDPL's synchronized classes (which have never been implemented), but in
order for them to work, they would have to be restrictive about what you do
with the member variables, and ultimately, the compiler would still only be
able to implicitly remove the outer layer of shared (i.e. the layer sitting
directly in the class object itself), since that's the only layer that the
compiler could prove hadn't had any references to it escape. So, you'd have
to create a class just to be able to avoid casting, and it wouldn't
implicitly remove enough of shared to be useful in anything but simple
cases.

Sure, it would be great if we could have shared be implicitly removed when
the object in question is protected by a mutex, but the type system would
have to know that that mutex was associated with that object and be able to
prove not only that that mutex was locked but that no other piece of code
could possibly access that shared object without locking that mutex. It
would also have to be able to prove that no thread-local references escaped
from the code where shared was implicitly removed. It's incredibly difficult
to bake the required information into the type system even while be very
restrictive about what's allowed let alone while allowing code to be as
flexible as code generally needs to be - especially in a systems language
like D.

If someone actually manages to come up with an appropriate scheme that lets
us implicitly removed shared under some set of circumstances, then we may
very well get that ability at some point in the future, but it seems very
unlikely as things stand, and even if someone did manage it, it's even less
likely that it would work outside of a limited set of use cases, since there
are a variety of ways of dealing with safely accessing data across threads.

So, for the forseeable future, explicit casts are generally going to be
required when dealing with shared.

- Jonathan M Davis





Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 7/10/20 2:30 PM, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:35:56 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
Mark your setTime as shared, then cast away shared (as you don't need 
atomics once it's locked), and assign:


synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
    (cast()this).time = t;
}


I know I can make it work by casting, my question is:

we had a lock on the owning shared object already, WHY we still need the 
cast to make it compile.




Because locking isn't that simple. There is no "one size fits all" 
locking scheme that can be enforced by the language. So the best option 
is to make sure if you shoot yourself in the foot, it's your fault, and 
not D's.


-Steve


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread mw via Digitalmars-d-learn
On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:35:56 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
Mark your setTime as shared, then cast away shared (as you 
don't need atomics once it's locked), and assign:


synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
(cast()this).time = t;
}


I know I can make it work by casting, my question is:

we had a lock on the owning shared object already, WHY we still 
need the cast to make it compile.




Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn

On 7/10/20 1:18 PM, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 08:48:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 05:12:06 UTC, mw wrote:

looks like we still have to cast:
as of 2020, sigh.


Why not?


Because cast is ugly.

I've also tried this:
```
class A {
     SysTime time;
     synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) {
     time = t;
     }
}

void main() {
     shared A a = new A();
     SysTime time;
     a.setTime(time);
}
```

Same Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign cannot deduce 
function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared, candidates are:
/usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17): opAssign()(auto 
ref const(SysTime) rhs)


However, we have a lock on the owning shared object, still we need cast 
to make it compile:

```
   cast()time = t;
```



Mark your setTime as shared, then cast away shared (as you don't need 
atomics once it's locked), and assign:


synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) shared {
(cast()this).time = t;
}

-Steve


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread mw via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 17:18:25 UTC, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 08:48:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 05:12:06 UTC, mw wrote:

looks like we still have to cast:
as of 2020, sigh.


Why not?


Because cast is ugly.

I've also tried this:
```
class A {
SysTime time;
synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) {
time = t;
}
}

void main() {
shared A a = new A();
SysTime time;
a.setTime(time);
}
```

Same Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign 
cannot deduce function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared, 
candidates are:
/usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17):
opAssign()(auto ref const(SysTime) rhs)


However, we have a lock on the owning shared object, still we 
need cast to make it compile:

```
  cast()time = t;
```


Shall I log an enhancement bug for this?


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread mw via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 08:48:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 05:12:06 UTC, mw wrote:

looks like we still have to cast:
as of 2020, sigh.


Why not?


Because cast is ugly.

I've also tried this:
```
class A {
SysTime time;
synchronized setTime(ref SysTime t) {
time = t;
}
}

void main() {
shared A a = new A();
SysTime time;
a.setTime(time);
}
```

Same Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign cannot 
deduce function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared, 
candidates are:
/usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17):
opAssign()(auto ref const(SysTime) rhs)


However, we have a lock on the owning shared object, still we 
need cast to make it compile:

```
  cast()time = t;
```




Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 05:12:06 UTC, mw wrote:

looks like we still have to cast:
as of 2020, sigh.


Why not?


Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-10 Thread Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-learn
On Thursday, July 9, 2020 9:01:20 PM MDT mw via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 02:59:56 UTC, mw wrote:
> > Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign cannot
> > deduce function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared,
> > candidates are:
> > /usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17):
> > opAssign()(auto ref const(SysTime) rhs)
>
> of course, better without casting.

Unless you're dealing with a primitive type that works with atomics, you
pretty much always have to cast when using shared (the only real exception
being objects that are specifically designed to work as shared and do the
atomics or casting internally for you). In general, when operating on a
shared object, you need to protect the section of code that's operating on
it with a mutex and then temporarily cast away shared to operate on the
object as thread-local. It's then up to you to ensure that no thread-local
references to the shared data escape the section of code protected by the
mutex (though scope may help with that if used in conjunction with
-dip1000).

- Jonathan M Davis





Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-09 Thread mw via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 03:01:20 UTC, mw wrote:

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 02:59:56 UTC, mw wrote:
Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign cannot 
deduce function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared, 
candidates are:
/usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17):
opAssign()(auto ref const(SysTime) rhs)


of course, better without casting.


looks like we still have to cast:

https://forum.dlang.org/post/lehfwimpolhrmkfmt...@forum.dlang.org


as of 2020, sigh.



Re: how to assign to shared obj.systime?

2020-07-09 Thread mw via Digitalmars-d-learn

On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 02:59:56 UTC, mw wrote:
Error: template std.datetime.systime.SysTime.opAssign cannot 
deduce function from argument types !()(SysTime) shared, 
candidates are:
/usr/include/dmd/phobos/std/datetime/systime.d(659,17):
opAssign()(auto ref const(SysTime) rhs)


of course, better without casting.