Re: [PATCH 2/2] manual: Document __libc_single_threaded

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 07:40:19PM +0200, Florian Weimer via Libc-alpha wrote:
> * Rich Felker:
> 
> >> Our discussion focused on the problem that observing a thread count of 1
> >> in pthread_join does not necessarily mean that it is safe to assume at
> >> this point that the process is single-threaded, in glibc's
> >> implementation that uses a simple __nptl_nthreads counter decremented on
> >> the thread itself.  This does not cause a low-level data race directly,
> >> but is potentially still incorrect (I'm not quite sure yet).
> >
> > pthread_join necessarily has an acquire barrier (this is a fundamental
> > requirement of the interface contract; join is acquiring the results
> > of the thread) so under some weak assumptions on unsynchronized memory
> > access (e.g. non-tearing, not seeing a value that wasn't stored
> > sometime between the last and next acquire barriers on the observer's
> > side) I think observing it from pthread_join is safe.
> 
> Because of the meaning of the variable, it is *completely* safe if there
> are no detached threads, without any further assumptions.
> 
> With detached threads an pthread_join observing a thread count of 1 (as
> decreased during thread exit), the validity of setting
> __libc_single_threaded depends on whether the kernel offers something
> that causes a memory write on thread exit.  I know of at least two such

I don't follow. Why do you care about the kernel entity exiting here?
You should only care about having a release barrier before the update
to the count, so that seeing the updated count guarantees seeing any
changes to memory made by the exiting detached thread.

Rich