Slashdot Mirror
libkse to libpthread switch on FreeBSD
Dan writes "Daniel Eischen says that libkse has been renamed back to libpthread and is now the default threads library. The gcc-pthread option has also been changed to link to libpthread instead of libc_r. For alpha and sparc64 machines, libkse has not been renamed and links are installed so that libpthread points to libc_r. FreeBSD GNOME team's Joe Marcus Clarke confirmed that the ports system will switch to using libpthread as the default for PTHREAD_LIBS shortly. A patch set is currently being tested, once that completes, the necessary port hooks will be in place to easily build applications linked to libpthread."
... according to some, but I think it's rather useful. The old saying "Don't put your eggs in one basket" applies. (Friendly) Competition is good for open source software - witness KDE and Gnome's attempts to out-innovate eachother.
I don't think for one minute that SCO's claims about Linux are legitimate, but imagine if they were: and some idiot judge ordered that Linux distribution was stopped. I think all the BSD trolls might be glad of an alternative kernel and userland under those circumstances!
It's intersting that the architects of Windows NT came to the same conclusion back in the 1980s.
I personally don't believe that what's best for NT, Linux and now Solaris is necessarily best for FreeBSD, but the fact that the leading OS (NT), leading open-source OS (Linux) and leading UNIX OS (Solaris) all decided on 1:1 (belatedly in the case of Solaris) is certainly an endorsement of it.
IIRC, one of the main reasons Sun chose an M:N model for Solaris was to ease the porting of old UNIX software that assumed user-mode threads libraries in lieu of real threads (this sort of software ran notoriously badly when ported to NT). With most UNIXes (and even Linux) having had real threads for some time now, this sort of software has become less common, and there isn't such a need to support it, hence the move to 1:1.
I'd be interested to know why the FreeBSD team chose an M:N design, and in what areas their design is expected to be superior to a 1:1 model, or to the old Solaris M:N model.