Outdated egg!

This is an egg for CHICKEN 4, the unsupported old release. You're almost certainly looking for the CHICKEN 5 version of this egg, if it exists.

If it does not exist, there may be equivalent functionality provided by another egg; have a look at the egg index. Otherwise, please consider porting this egg to the current version of CHICKEN.

hopefully

Simple composable transactional memory.

The API is similar to Clojure and STMX. However (currently) limited, focused on a low level, procedural interface.

  1. Outdated egg!
  2. hopefully
    1. Overview
    2. Issues
    3. Modules
      1. hopefully
      2. hopefully-current
    4. Examples
    5. Compile time options
    6. About this egg
      1. Source
      2. Authors
      3. Version History

Overview

This egg provides two modules: hopefully and hopefully-current.

Module hopefully contains bindings recommended to use. These transactions are roughly as fast as normal locking. (Depending more on compiler optimizations and usage szenarios.)

Module hopefully-current adds support for the concept of an implicit current transaction, which is nice but and order of magnitude more expensive at runtime.

Issues

define-a-record and define-ac-record both define a TYPE-FIELD accessor, though with incompatible semantics. While the AC-variant is changes meaning depending on whether or not there is a current-transaction on the thread. The A-variant always returns the external value. The former is OK, since the whole purpose is to be downward compatible to define-record-based code not aware of transactions. But once most of a code base is converted to use references, once only wants to replace define-ac-record with define-a-record. At that time those field readers should not suddenly change meaning anymore. The old "global" accessors should become inaccessible. The "alway-return-global-value" accessors need to be renamed (and the renamed value defined by define-ac-record as well to aid the transition). Just how rename it? Append "@"?

Modules

hopefully

[syntax] define-a-record

Like define-record, defines procedures according to the following pattern.

[procedure] (make-TYPE FIELDS ...) -> AREC
[procedure] (TYPE-FIELD-ref AREC TNX) => REF

Return a reference for use with CELL-REF (alias "@") and ALTER!.

Note: Try to use this accessor just once per object+field. Multiple calls (within a lightweight transaction) will produce independent references. (If these become inconsistent, the commit will fail nevertheless.) Only those references used to (set! (@ REF) val) will return the in-transaction value.

[procedure] (TYPE-FIELD AREC)

Return the FIELD value visible without transactions in effect.

[procedure] (TYPE-tag AREC)

Purely for debugging. Mayb e removed. Return the internal version tag of the slot.

[procedure] (cell-ref REF)

Retrieve the in-transaction value from the REFerence (and add it to the transactions dependencies).

[procedure] (@ REF)

Alias to cell-ref. With generalized setter.

[procedure] (alter! REF val)

Alter a REFerence (produced by the type-field-ref accessors to hold the new value val. This also adds the cell to the dependencies of the transaction associated with the REF.

[procedure] (call-with-transaction PROC)
[procedure] (call-with-transaction/values PROC)

Call PROC with one argument, a fresh (lightweight) transaction. PROC may be called multiple times in case of a conflict. (See hopefully-current for the difference to heavy transactions).

Returns whatever PROC returns. Use call-with-transaction for multiple value returns call-with-transaction/values returns all values.

Note: One should not pass the transaction argument around among threads or capture it. Most (if not all) resulting conditions should be handled. But it is no good idea.

hopefully-current

This module introduces the concept of a default current-transaction and heavy transactions.

When a reference is added to a heavy transaction, the transactions dependencies are searched and if a reference to the same object+slot is found, it is returned.

[syntax] define-ac-record

Like define-a-record.

define-ac-record is provided for maximum compatibility with define-record. Just changing the record definition should make code aware of the current transaction.

[procedure] (make-TYPE FIELDS..) -> ACREC

Accessors:

[procedure] (TYPE-FIELD-ref ACREC TNX) => REF

Return a reference to the in-transaction value of field in ACREC for use with CELL-REF (alias "@") and ALTER!. See sibling definition in hopefully.

[procedure] (TYPE-FIELD ACREC)

Return the value of field in ACREC. Returns the in-transaction value with respect to the current-transaction or the outside value if there is no current-transaction in the current-thread.

Note: this is roughly an order of magnitude slower than the corresponding accessor from define-a-record

[procedure] (TYPE-FIELD-set! ACREC val) -> undefined

Set the value of field to val. Changes the in-transaction value respect to the current-transaction or the outside value if there is no current-transaction in the current-thread.

Note: this is roughly an order of magnitude slower than the corresponding accessor from define-a-record

[procedure] (with-current-transaction THUNK)

Establish a new current-transaction and call THUNK. After thunk completed, commit the current transaction. If that failes, THUNK is called again.

Returns whatever THUNK returns.

Examples

(define-a-record gbox v)
(define b1 (make-gbox 0))
(define b2 (make-gbox 1))

(call-with-transaction
 (lambda (tnx)
   (let ((x (gbox-v-ref b1 tnx))
         (i (gbox-v-ref b2 tnx)))
     (let ((ni (@ i)))
       (alter! x (+ (@ x) ni))
       (alter! i (add1 ni))))))

See also tests/run.scm.

Compile time options

-D no-dirty-tagging : save some internal consitency checks -D debug: add additional consitency checks

About this egg

Source

Latest version: hopefully from askemos.org

Authors

Jörg F. Wittenberger

Version History

0.2.3: 2015-12-28 -- Modified tests/run.scm as it did work on some, but not all platforms.

0.2.2: 2015-12-21 -- Bugfix: use of ##sys#setislot with non-immediate objects. Some more tweaks.

0.2.1: 2015-12-19 -- Some tweaks.

0.2: 2015-12-18 -- Replacing chicken hash tables with llrb trees made ac-records about 4x faster.

0.1.1: 2015-12-18 -- Fix missing unquote.

0.1: 2015-12-16 -- Initial Release