Re: gnulib and threaded execution

[Bruno Haible]

Ben Pfaff wrote:
> > I would find it useful and systematic if we started to add a
> > section "Multithreading:" to the module descriptions. ...
> 
> The individual function descriptions in the manual might be a
> good place to document where the thread-safety of a function
> departs from that implemented by glibc or specified by POSIX.

But most applicative modules, from 'acl' over 'crypto/des' to
'yield' are not mentioned in the documentation, and I don't
think it's realistic to expect them to be within 2 years.
For this reason, I would prefer to see the MT doc to be in the
module description.

There are also POSIX and glibc functions that are not replaced
by gnulib, like 'strcmp' or 'random'. For these, users should
refer to POSIX. For example, about random(), POSIX says:
"Threaded applications should use erand48(), nrand48(), or jrand48()
...". But many people are looking at the Linux man-pages, not
at the POSIX specification. Therefore, if one is seeking a
good place where to document the MT-safetiness of POSIX and
glibc functions, the Linux man-pages would be a better place
than the gnulib manual. But yes, the gnulib applicative modules
would rely on it.

Bruno