Re: [Sbcl-devel] Signal handling trickery

[Brian M. <br...@ma...>]

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> * We can, however, gain a synchronous timeout ability by making various
>    blocking functions have not just a :TIMEOUT parameter, but by making
>    them also respect a global *DEADLINE*. I hesitate to say anything
>    about properties of such synchronous timeouts, though.

Hi Nikodemus,

What is your concern here about the properties of such timeouts?

Regardless of whether async unwinds can be made safe, I think what you 
describe is good global policy. For applications which call a number of 
blocking APIs but are unconcerned with entering an infinite loop in Lisp 
code, this is all the timeout machinery which is necessary. It would 
probably be a good idea to expose the API used here so that FFI users 
can respect these timeouts as well. I've a few thoughts here if others 
are interested.

Thanks,

-- 
Brian Mastenbrook
br...@ma...
http://brian.mastenbrook.net/