See README.alpha for Linux on DEC AXP info.

This file applies mostly to Linux/Intel IA32.  Ports to Linux on an M68K,

IA64, SPARC, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC are integrated too.  They should behave

similarly, except that the PowerPC port lacks incremental GC support, and

it is unknown to what extent the Linux threads code is functional.

See below for M68K specific notes.

Incremental GC is generally supported.

Dynamic libraries are supported on an ELF system.

The collector appears to work reliably with Linux threads, but beware

of older versions of glibc and gdb.

The garbage collector uses SIGPWR and SIGXCPU if it is used with

Linux threads.  These should not be touched by the client program.

To use threads, you need to abide by the following requirements:

1) You need to use LinuxThreads or NPTL (which are included in libc6).

   The collector relies on some implementation details of the LinuxThreads

   package.  This code may not work on other

   pthread implementations (in particular it will *not* work with

   MIT pthreads).

2) You must compile the collector with -DGC_LINUX_THREADS (or

   just -DGC_THREADS) and -D_REENTRANT specified in the Makefile.

3a) Every file that makes thread calls should define GC_LINUX_THREADS and

   _REENTRANT and then include gc.h.  Gc.h redefines some of the

   pthread primitives as macros which also provide the collector with

   information it requires.

3b) A new alternative to (3a) is to build the collector and compile GC clients

   with -DGC_USE_LD_WRAP, and to link the final program with

   (for ld) --wrap dlopen --wrap pthread_create \

            --wrap pthread_join --wrap pthread_detach \

            --wrap pthread_sigmask --wrap pthread_exit --wrap pthread_cancel

   (for gcc) -Wl,--wrap -Wl,dlopen -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_create \

             -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_join -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_detach \

             -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_sigmask -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_exit \

             -Wl,--wrap -Wl,pthread_cancel

   In any case, _REENTRANT should be defined during compilation.

4) Dlopen() disables collection during its execution.  (It can't run

   concurrently with the collector, since the collector looks at its

   data structures.  It can't acquire the allocator lock, since arbitrary

   user startup code may run as part of dlopen().)  Under unusual

   conditions, this may cause unexpected heap growth.

5) The combination of GC_LINUX_THREADS, REDIRECT_MALLOC, and incremental

   collection is probably not fully reliable, though it now seems to work

   in simple cases.

6) Thread local storage may not be viewed as part of the root set by the

   collector.  This probably depends on the linuxthreads version.  For the

   time being, any collectible memory referenced by thread local storage

   should also be referenced from elsewhere, or be allocated as uncollectible.

   (This is really a bug that should be fixed somehow.  The current GC

   version probably gets things right if there are not too many tls locations

   and if dlopen is not used.)

M68K LINUX:

(From Richard Zidlicky)

The bad news is that it can crash every linux-m68k kernel on a 68040,

so an additional test is needed somewhere on startup. I have meanwhile

patches to correct the problem in 68040 buserror handler but it is not

yet in any standard kernel.

Here is a simple test program to detect whether the kernel has the

problem. It could be run as a separate check in configure or tested

upon startup. If it fails (return !0) than mprotect can't be used

on that system.

/*

 * test for bug that may crash 68040 based Linux

 */

#include <sys/mman.h>

#include <signal.h>

#include <unistd.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <stdlib.h>

char *membase;

int pagesize=4096;

int pageshift=12;

int x_taken=0;

int sighandler(int sig)

{

   mprotect(membase,pagesize,PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE);

   x_taken=1;

}

main()

{

  long l;

   signal(SIGSEGV,sighandler);

   l=(long)mmap(NULL,pagesize,PROT_READ,MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANON,-1,0);

  if (l==-1)

     {

       perror("mmap/malloc");

       abort();

     }

  membase=(char*)l;

    *(long*)(membase+sizeof(long))=123456789;

  if (*(long*)(membase+sizeof(long)) != 123456789 )

    {

      fprintf(stderr,"writeback failed !\n");

      exit(1);

    }

  if (!x_taken)

    {

      fprintf(stderr,"exception not taken !\n");

      exit(1);

    }

  fprintf(stderr,"vmtest Ok\n");

  exit(0);

}