14. The lock module

14.1. Purpose

.purpose: Support the locking needs of the thread-safe design. In particular:

  • recursive locks;

  • binary locks;

  • recursive “global” lock that need not be allocated or initialized by the client;

  • binary “global” lock that need not be allocated or initialized by the client.

.context: The MPS has to be able to operate in a multi-threaded environment. The thread-safe design (design.mps.thread-safety) requires client-allocatable binary locks, a global binary lock and a global recursive lock. An interface to client-allocatable recursive locks is also present to support any potential use, because of historic requirements, and because the implementation will presumably be necessary anyway for the global recursive lock.

14.2. Background

.need: In an environment where multiple threads are accessing shared data. The threads which access data which is shared with other threads need to cooperate with those threads to maintain consistency. Locks provide a simple mechanism for doing this.

.ownership: A lock is an object which may be “owned” by a single thread at a time. By claiming ownership of a lock before executing some piece of code a thread can guarantee that no other thread owns the lock during execution of that code. If some other thread holds a claim on a lock, the thread trying to claim the lock will suspend until the lock is released by the owning thread.

.data: A simple way of using this behaviour is to associate a lock with a shared data structure. By claiming that lock around accesses to the data, a consistent view of the structure can be seen by the accessing thread. More generally any set of operations which are required to be mutually exclusive may be performed so by using locks.

14.3. Overview

.adt: There is an abstract datatype Lock which points to a locking structure LockStruct. This structure is opaque to any client, although an interface is provided to supply the size of the structure for any client wishing to make a new lock. The lock is not allocated by the module as allocation itself may require locking. LockStruct is implementation specific.

.simple-lock: There are facilities for claiming and releasing locks. Lock is used for both binary and recursive locking.

.global-locks: “Global” locks are so called because they are used to protect data in a global location (such as a global variable). The lock module provides two global locks; one recursive and one binary. There are facilities for claiming and releasing both of these locks. These global locks have the advantage that they need not be allocated or atomically initialized by the client, so they may be used for locking the initialization of the allocator itself. The binary global lock is intended to protect mutable data, possibly in conjunction with other local locking strategies. The recursive global lock is intended to protect static read-only data during one-off initialization. See design.mps.thread-safety.

.deadlock: This module does not provide any deadlock protection. Clients are responsible for avoiding deadlock by using traditional strategies such as ordering of locks. (See design.mps.thread-safety.deadlock.)

.single-thread: In the single-threaded configuration, locks are not needed and the claim/release interfaces defined to be no-ops.

14.4. Detailed design

.interface: The interface comprises the following functions:

size_t LockSize(void)

Return the size of a LockStruct for allocation purposes.

void LockInit(Lock lock)

After initialisation the lock is not owned by any thread.

void LockFinish(Lock lock)

Before finalisation the lock must not beowned by any thread.

void LockClaim(Lock lock)

Claims ownership of a lock that was previously not held by current thread.

void LockReleaseMPM(Lock lock)

Releases ownership of a lock that is currently owned.

void LockClaimRecursive(Lock lock)

Remembers the previous state of the lock with respect to the current thread and claims the lock (if not already held).

void LockReleaseRecursive(Lock lock)

Testores the previous state of the lock stored by corresponding LockClaimRecursive() call.

void LockClaimGlobal(void)

Claims ownership of the binary global lock which was previously not held by current thread.

void LockReleaseGlobal(void)

Releases ownership of the binary global lock that is currently owned.

void LockClaimGlobalRecursive(void)

Remembers the previous state of the recursive global lock with respect to the current thread and claims the lock (if not already held).

void LockReleaseGlobalRecursive(void)

Restores the previous state of the recursive global lock stored by corresponding LockClaimGlobalRecursive() call.

.impl.recursive: For recursive claims, the list of previous states can be simply implemented by keeping a count of the number of claims made by the current thread so far. In multi-threaded implementation below this is handled by the operating system. A count is still kept and used to check correctness.

.impl.global: The binary and recursive global locks may actually be implemented using the same mechanism as normal locks.

.impl.ansi: Single-Threaded Generic Implementation:

  • single-thread;

  • no need for locking;

  • locking structure contains count;

  • provides checking in debug version;

  • otherwise does nothing except keep count of claims.

.impl.win32: Win32 Implementation:

  • supports Win32’s threads;

  • uses Critical Sections [ref?];

  • locking structure contains a Critical Section;

  • both recursive and non-recursive calls use same Windows function;

  • also performs checking.

.impl.linux: LinuxThreads Implementation (possibly suitable for all PThreads implementations):

  • supports LinuxThreads threads, which are an implementation of PThreads (see http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/linuxthreads/);

  • locking structure contains a mutex, initialized to check for recursive locking;

  • locking structure contains a count of the number of active claims;

  • non-recursive locking calls pthread_mutex_lock() and expects success;

  • recursive locking calls pthread_mutex_lock() and expects either success or EDEADLK (indicating a recursive claim);

  • also performs checking.