Re: Posix skin and Mutex initialisation/destruction inconsistencies

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>]

On 06.03.19 10:39, Lange Norbert via Xenomai wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 1)
> There is an inconsistency with the documentation [1], which claims that mutex and condition variables
> need to be explicitly initialized with the *_init functions.
> The implementation however checks the state via a flag and calls *_init if necessary, and the program below works correctly.

Lazy init is not a recommended pattern as it implies high costs and potentially 
unexpected (and often unhandled) errors for typically critical lock/unlock 
operations. I would guess that this is why it was not explicitly mentioned.

> 
> 2)
> There is some further issue, if you depend on the "lazy initialization", demonstrated by running the
> program below with an argument. This case can happen for example if some subsystem was removed
> before being used (never needed the lock).
> In other words, the "lazy initialization" scheme is working with lock/unlock but not with destroy.
> 
> 
> #include <assert.h>
> #include <pthread.h>
> 
> int main(int argc, char const *argv[]) {
>          pthread_mutex_t mymutex = PTHREAD_ERRORCHECK_MUTEX_INITIALIZER_NP;
> 
>    if (argc == 1) {
>      assert(0 == pthread_mutex_lock(&mymutex));
>      assert(0 == pthread_mutex_unlock(&mymutex));
>    }
>    assert(0 == pthread_mutex_destroy(&mymutex));

That should probably be fixed. Patch welcome.

Jan

-- 
Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, CT RDA IOT SES-DE
Corporate Competence Center Embedded Linux