5 ms·

Emscripten gains experimental pthreads support

87 points by vmorgulis 11y ago

haberman 11y ago
Looks like this announcement is from two months ago. Anyone have experience using this?
- gunyarakun 11y ago
  I found some bugs and commented on the original pull request for the pthread support. https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/pull/3266 https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/pull/3266. In my opinion, the pthread support itself works well now. But the biggest problem of the implementation is that SharedArrayBuffer, the pthread support calls for, is implemented only in Firefox currently. One of the purpose to use emscripten is made an application cross-platform web application. You can get a "non-webbish" code runs only in Firefox with pthread-supported emscripten as of now. I'm looking forward to other browsers with SharedArrayBuffer support, especially Mobile Safari.
  - marcosscriven 11y ago
    Looks like it's coming to Chrome: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/d-0ibJwCS24 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink... But agree iOS Safari would be a great addition for this.
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's also behind a flag and will remain so until the spec is stable enough that it won't change when it becomes standard (likely EcmaScript 2017).
jbb555 11y ago
I hate all this web stuff so much. It's slowly reinventing the last 40 years of computing, only a slow, badly designed, unreliable base.
- code_sterling 11y ago
  You are welcome to come up with a better idea.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    It's easy to come up with a better idea - getting that idea implemented on a significant % of working devices not so much.
    - andybak 11y ago
      > getting that idea implemented on a significant % of working devices not so much Then the 'idea' is only solving a small part of the problem. Compatibility and wide distribution is as much a technological problem as threading - and a much harder one to solve. It's wrong to belittle browsers for reinventing the easy parts of the problem when they are the best solution we've ever had to the hard part.
      - moonchrome 11y ago
        >Compatibility and wide distribution is as much a technological problem as threading No it isn't because their solution isn't actually compatible with any other implementation than FF and will only eventually get in to next versions of browsers. The whole problem is much more political (who invents it amd trough what process depends very much on what will be adopted as clearly shown in the past) than technical so I can understand OPs dislike of bad technical solutions for political reasons. >It's wrong to belittle browsers for reinventing the easy parts of the problem when they are the best solution we've ever had to the hard part. Arguable, with Windows 10 store and apps integration improvement (no need for full screen apps) I can see "desktop" moving to the similar sandbox model as phones, as far as I'm aware OSX also has app sand-boxing model. I could see a .NET or JVM based cross platform solution that would require minimal changes for UI across platforms - Xamarin style but more polished/OSS. Creating cross platform wrappers for common functionality (eg. OpenGL, File System, etc.) is trivial and already done - no need to wait for standardization body and vendors to implement it by 2020.

87 points by vmorgulis 11y ago

haberman 11y ago

Looks like this announcement is from two months ago. Anyone have experience using this?

gunyarakun 11y ago
I found some bugs and commented on the original pull request for the pthread support. https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/pull/3266 https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/pull/3266. In my opinion, the pthread support itself works well now. But the biggest problem of the implementation is that SharedArrayBuffer, the pthread support calls for, is implemented only in Firefox currently. One of the purpose to use emscripten is made an application cross-platform web application. You can get a "non-webbish" code runs only in Firefox with pthread-supported emscripten as of now. I'm looking forward to other browsers with SharedArrayBuffer support, especially Mobile Safari.
- marcosscriven 11y ago
  Looks like it's coming to Chrome: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/d-0ibJwCS24 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink... But agree iOS Safari would be a great addition for this.
- bobajeff 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's also behind a flag and will remain so until the spec is stable enough that it won't change when it becomes standard (likely EcmaScript 2017).

jbb555 11y ago

I hate all this web stuff so much. It's slowly reinventing the last 40 years of computing, only a slow, badly designed, unreliable base.

code_sterling 11y ago
You are welcome to come up with a better idea.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  It's easy to come up with a better idea - getting that idea implemented on a significant % of working devices not so much.
  - andybak 11y ago
    > getting that idea implemented on a significant % of working devices not so much Then the 'idea' is only solving a small part of the problem. Compatibility and wide distribution is as much a technological problem as threading - and a much harder one to solve. It's wrong to belittle browsers for reinventing the easy parts of the problem when they are the best solution we've ever had to the hard part.
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      >Compatibility and wide distribution is as much a technological problem as threading No it isn't because their solution isn't actually compatible with any other implementation than FF and will only eventually get in to next versions of browsers. The whole problem is much more political (who invents it amd trough what process depends very much on what will be adopted as clearly shown in the past) than technical so I can understand OPs dislike of bad technical solutions for political reasons. >It's wrong to belittle browsers for reinventing the easy parts of the problem when they are the best solution we've ever had to the hard part. Arguable, with Windows 10 store and apps integration improvement (no need for full screen apps) I can see "desktop" moving to the similar sandbox model as phones, as far as I'm aware OSX also has app sand-boxing model. I could see a .NET or JVM based cross platform solution that would require minimal changes for UI across platforms - Xamarin style but more polished/OSS. Creating cross platform wrappers for common functionality (eg. OpenGL, File System, etc.) is trivial and already done - no need to wait for standardization body and vendors to implement it by 2020.