Configure flag for --without-threads

[whiteknight]

The file t/src/atomic.t is invalid if we don't configure and build Parrot with threading support. Threading support is the default, unless we configure with the --without-threads flag. In that case, Parrot is built without thread support and the tests in t/src/atomic.t are invalid and should be skipped.

I don't see a flag in parrot_config which looks like it contains this information. There is a HAS_THREADS flag in parrot_config, but it always returns "1" whether --without-threads or not.

We need a reliable way to determine if Parrot has threading support or not.

[jkeenan]

Replying to whiteknight:

I don't see a flag in parrot_config which looks like it contains this information. There is a HAS_THREADS flag in parrot_config, but it always returns "1" whether --without-threads or not. We need a reliable way to determine if Parrot has threading support or not.

Please see config/auto/thread.pm. It clearly allows for cases where HAS_THREADS would be set to 0. Tonight I wrote some tests in t/steps/auto/thread-01.t that explicitly test for that case. AFAICT, i_pthread is something picked up from the Perl 5 %Config.

Now it is of course possible that the thread-detection method in auto::thread is incorrect or insufficient. If so, patches welcome.

Thank you very much.

kid51

[nwellnhof]

I can confirm that PARROT_HAS_THREADS doesn't get defined when configuring with --without-threads. The t/src/atomic.t issue was not config related and is fixed in 2053ac16289474a4a3eb.