alarm() on PC/MSoft

[tony at magg.net]

 Michael Gesundheit  wrote:
 
> Who ever of you out there who built kaffe on PC, with
> sygnus perhaps, I wonder what did you do about alarm().

Cygwin32 include files for GCC define SIGALRM for
Win32 platform but I haven't downloaded their source code
( will try later, if somebody doesn't come up with answer
shortly) so I can not say how is this signal implemented.

> I plan on replacing alarm() with SetTimer() which does
> exectly what we need. SIGALRM functionality. You
> provide time and a callback function and when the
> time expires the callback func. is called.
> 
> Any objections??

I don't understand Kaffe source code enough to offer
good objections but I have one question:

SIGALRM is used only in thread-internal.c and thread.c.

In THREAD.C there is this code:

#if !defined(USE_NATIVE_THREADS)
 /* Plug in the alarm handler */
#if defined(SIGALRM)
 catchSignal(SIGALRM, alarmException);
#else
#error "No alarm signal support"
#endif
#endif

If my very superficial impression is correct,
perhaps using native Win32 threads would
free you from the need to emulate signal (SIGALRM)?

Furthermore, the only serious problems that I had with testing
Kaffe on Cygwin32 regarded exactly threads. Even the simplest
test samples would crash somewhere in cygwin32.dll.

Hope this helps.

Tony Juricic
tony at magg.net