Re: [boost] shared_ptr under OS X

From: Ben Artin (macdev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-23 03:50:35

In article <045D1135-E8F5-4BF3-82BE-813C835E31FC_at_[hidden]>,
 Steve Ramsey <steve_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> In my (limited) research into the  
> problem, I haven't been able to find any good examples of hand-rolled  
> atomic ops that are mp-savvy, though I found plenty of dire warnings  
> against making the attempt and numerous recommendations to use either  
> the kernel-level or Carbon-level routines instead, depending on context.

I voiced my concern over hand-rolled assembly when this issue was brought up 
regarding the boost implementation, and I am going to voice it again. We do not 
have the resources to test this kind of a change on all the hardware we support, 
and the fact that a broken shared_ptr made it into a release just highlights 
this.

I do not think that the intended performance improvement is worth sacrificing 
the quality of our libraries, and I don't see a way to maintain that quality if 
we make hardware-specific changes while not having the resources to test on all 
the supported hardware (including future hardware).

My intent here is not to say "I told you so", but to point out that I consider 
this a pretty serious error, and that I think we should understand how it came 
to pass.

Ben

-- 
I changed my name: <http://periodic-kingdom.org/People/NameChange.php>