[dmd-concurrency] synchronized, shared, and regular methods inside the same class

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

I think there will be no more Thread class (sorry, Sean :o)). Just 
before starting this list we were discussing creating a small hierarchy 
that integrates threads, processes, and remote processes. The basic idea 
of that hierarchy is, again, that some users should be able to 
manipulate a concurrent entity without knowing whether it's a thread or 
a process.

Andrei

Graham St Jack wrote:
> 
>>>> I'm hoping this library-level trick will be enough to allow most of the classic synchronization mechanisms to be used in D 2.0.
>>>>       
>>>>> Re synchronized containers - I don't like the idea at all. That is going down the path of having many shared objects, which is notoriously difficult to get right, especially for non-experts. IMO, shared objects should be small in number, and serve as boundaries between threads, which otherwise play in their own separate sand-pits.
>>>>>         
>>>> A good pathological but functionally correct example is the Thread class in core.thread.  Thread instances should really be labeled as shared, but I know that when this happens the compiler will throw a fit.  The thing is, while some of the methods are already synchronized, there are quite a few which are not and don't need to be and neither do they need the variables they access to be made lock-free.  Even weirder is:
>>>>       
>>> Well I think Thread is a threading primitive so we shouldn't expect to be implementable without some oddities.
>>>     
>>
>> Sounds good.  Hopefully, it will be uniquely horrifying.
>> _______________________________________________
>>   
> One aspect of the Thread class that I find really annoying is that its 
> name is of type char[] instead of string. Can we change this please? 
> Also, it would be nice to have additional constructors that take a name.
> 
> I include thread names in my logs, so all my threads have names. This 
> means I have code like this:
>     thread.name = "name".dup;
> in the constructors of all my active classes, which is nasty.
> 
> 
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