Re: Some experience with the igc branch

[Gerd Möllmann]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  ofv@wanadoo.es,  emacs-devel@gnu.org,
>>   eller.helmut@gmail.com,  acorallo@gnu.org
>> Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2024 05:03:36 +0100
>> 
>> I'd prefer to send messages from handle_profiler_signal. Or something
>> equivalent to sending messages.
>
> How would that be different?  If the messages arrive asynchronously
> and are handled asynchronously, that's the moral equivalent of
> signals, no? 

I'm using SIGPROF below to make it more concrete. Similar for other
signals.

The idea is to get the backtrace in the SIGPROF handler, without
accessing Lisp data. That can be done, as I've tried to show.
Then place that backtrace somewhere.

In an an actor model architecture, one would use a message that contains
the backtrace and post it to a message board. I used that architecture
just as an example, because I like it a lot. In the same architecture,
typically a scheduler thread would then assign a thread to handle the
message. The handler handling the profiler message would then do what
record_backtrace today does after get_backtrace, i.e. count same
backtraces. 

That's only one example architectures, of course. One can use something
else, like queues that are handled by another thread, one doesn't need a
scheduler thread, and so on, and so on. Pip's work queue is an
example.