Development Logs

Project Details
Project Name STEP Libraries: Improving Thread Safety and Performance
Project Student Pulkit Mittal
IRC(nick) hoiji
Github (handle) hoiji09

Milestones

Compulsary

  • Thread Safety in cllazyfile Status: Review Awaiting
  • Thread Safety in clstepcore Status: Review Awaiting
  • Thread Safety in cleditor Status: Review Awaiting
  • Thread Safety in cldai Status: Review Awaiting

Bonus

In this section I will list down all other modifications which I did during the GSOC period.

  • Single threaded performance optimizations
    • Removed istream *in2 from STEPfile::AppendFile. Originally for the second pass a new istream (in2) was being created and the .step file was being opened again. This was prevented by directing the original istream (in) to the beggining of the .step file.
  • Code Refractoring
    • In libraries clstepcore and cldai, there were few classes which were very similar. The logic common to these classes was indentified and removed, a new class was created which had that common logic. The original classes were made to inherit from the new class. This removed duplicated code and also made making changes (for thread safety) easier.

GSOC Period

Week 1

17 May (Sat):

  • Figured out various functionalities in cllazyfile step library which should be made thread safe. These are
    1. Opening multiple files in parallel.
    2. (lazy) loading separate SDAI_Application_instance in parallel.
    3. Reading the forward / backward references of instances in parallel.
    4. Finding instances belonging to same / different types in parallel.
    5. Initializing / Setting the registry in parallel.
    6. Registering Data Sections in parallel
  • Strategizing how the various features will be added into the code. Firstly a test will be created to note the existance of thread safety for the above features. If the test fail then appropriate coding will be done

18 May (Sun):

  • A test was created in lazy_thread_safety_test.cc file, to check the concurrent read safety of getFwdRefs() and getRevRefs() and expectedly it failed.
  • Note: to run the test, the CMakeFiles: cmake/SC_CXX_schema_macros.cmake & src/cllazyfile/CMakeLists.txt were slightly messed up.

19 May (Mon):

  • Introduced getFwdRefsSafely and getRevRefsSafely which are thread safe. The thread safety test in lazy_thread_safety_test.cc passed. Submitted code through git in a branch called hj/cllazyfile-thread-safety.
  • Discussed with mentor about the importance order of functionalities mentioned above. Hence will be covering the functionalities in the following order 3(done)>4>2>1>6

20-21 May (Tue, Wed):

  • Noticed that getFwdRefsSafely and getRevRefsSafely are consume memory each time they are called (as separate clones are made for each invocation). (Blame the use of Judy Structure) The memory is freed only when destructor of lazyInstMgr is called. One way around this problem was to let the user call a function (say) returnFwdRefsSafely which would release the space related to a clone. Hence, I spent 2 days trying to modify the original judy code so that it allows closure of clones. But as I was not able to get a breakthrough, I have left this task for later.

22 May (Thu):

  • Created a test to check the thread safety of getInstances (i.e. finding instances belonging a specific type). As expected the test failed when the number of invocations were very high. This is because getInstances internally uses find operation which is not thread safe.

23 May (Fri):

  • Added the thread-safe getInstancesSafely and countInstancesSafely. Also submitted the code in github.

Week 2

24 May (Sat):

  • Started working towards making lazy-loading of instances thread safe.
    • Created a test which would spawn two threads which try to load instances.
      • In the first half of iterations the threads would try to load same set of instances.
      • In the second half of iterations the threads would try to load different set of instances (not necessary disjoint).
      • For each thread within one iteration an instance would be loaded twice. This checks the case where the instance may or may-not be already loaded and the case where the instance is already loaded.
    • The problem that arose during the compilation of the test was that, finally the _mainRegistry was being used, and I had very little idea about the schemas and registries. It could not find the schema.h file.
  • Couldn't work the earlier half of the day as I was traveling.

25 May (Sun):

  • Got the thread safety test for lazy-loading to compile by doing certain changes in the src/cllazyfile/CMakeLists.txt.
    • This was done by including the directory ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/schemas/sdai_cd209 for the above test.
    • The restriction that the above changes imposed on lazy_thread_safety_test was that, now it has to be given the the step file data/cd209/ATS1-out.stp as input.

  • A potential bug was found while running the above test. The bug would appear if we follow the following steps

    1. lazyInstMgr * mgr = new lazyInstMgr;
    2. mgr->initRegistry( SchemaInit );
    3. mgr->openFile( fileName );
    4. delete mgr
    5. lazyInstMgr * mgr = new lazyInstMgr;

    6. mgr->initRegistry( SchemaInit );

    7. The last step would cause assertion failure in function setRegistery. (i.e. assert( _mainRegistry == 0 )). This was solved by explicitly initializing _mainRegistry with '0' inside the lazyInstMgr constructor.

    8. When the test was run on the original loadInstance function, it gave assertion error related to the input stream.
    9. Saw the comments posted by Mark on my earlier commits. I decided to make corresponding changes in the code, once I had made lazy-loading thread safe

26 May (Mon):

  • A thread-safe version of loadInstance was created. For this a fat lock was used. It is possible that we can make the lock application finer, however that has been left for later. This version passed the test successfully.
    • However their appeared to be some problem in the step file, because loading of one particular instance always failed, irrespective of the number of threads. A temporary fix was applied by removing a newline character from the step file.
    • In the loadInstance function, their was an issue of a warning instance #... not found in any section appearing even if the instance was found in the _instancesLoaded list. The fix was trivial
  • A thread safe counterpart to mgr->getAdapter()->FindFileId( instanceID )->GetSTEPentity() was made. This was slightly complicated then the previous features as it consisted of 2 complex steps in different classes. Both being thread unsafe.
    • For this each thread was assigned its own mgrNodeHelper. This mgrNodeHelper was created once, for each thread and reused on later invocations.
    • Dependency was taken on thread safe loadInstanceSafely
    • The counterpart was also successfully tested

27 May (Tue):

  • As per the advice given by Mark, the macro HAVE_STD_THREAD was utilized in CMakeLists.txt, including header files, mutex / thread safe functions declarations etc.
    • This opportunity was also used to clean up the CMakeLists.txt
  • Fixed the newline issue encountered on 26th May. This was done by modifying the lazyfile parser by instructing it to ignore the newlines in such cases. The temporary fix was reverted back as it was no longer required.
  • Prepared the changes done from 24th May in the form of multiple commits. Also the thread safe code was clubbed together wherever possible for easy identification.

28 May (Wed):

  • While introducing HAVE_STD_THREAD in src/cllazyfile/lazyTypes.h a compilation problem was encountered. Somehow HAVE_STD_THREAD macro was not being recognized by lazyTypes.h. This was surprising as HAVE_STD_THREAD was recognized by lazyInstMgr.cc. The final solution was to explicitly declare HAVE_STD_THREAD through the compiler flag in src/cllazyfile/CMakeLists.txt.
  • Also continuing from the last point in 27th May, the work done from 24th May was organized into 12 different commits and submitted to github.

29 May (Thu):

  • Started adding a test for checking thread safety in while opening multiple files in parallel, using the same lazyInstMgr.
    • The first and foremost problem was identifying the data structures of the lazyInstMgr whose state would change when lazyInstMgr::openFile() is called. Unlike the previous functionalities here more then one data structures were involved. The following data structures were identified.
      • instanceRefs_t _fwdInstanceRefs
      • instanceRefs_t _revInstanceRefs
      • instanceTypes_t * _instanceTypes
      • instanceStreamPos_t _instanceStreamPos
      • dataSectionReaderVec_t _dataSections
      • lazyFileReaderVec_t _files
      • unsigned long _lazyInstanceCount
      • int _longestTypeNameLen
      • std::string _longestTypeName
    • The test would create two instances of lazyInstMgr, through first it would call openFile for two different files in a serial manner, through second it would call openFile for these two files parallely. Later it would compare the above data structures of both the instance managers and report any discrepancy it finds.

30 May (Fri):

  • The above test was completed.
    • An extra lazyInstMgr API was added to get _instanceStreamPos data structure for comparison.
    • The test when run on existing openFile failed. Multiple reasons were attributed to the failure by running the test multiple times. Apart from gracefully failing, the test also failed many times due to segmentation fault or an assertion failure in the cllazyfile parser.
  • Work was started on making the openFile thread safe.

Week 3

31 May (Sat):

  • At this I was going through the dilemma of following the convention of creating different functions for thread safe code vs. using macros for demarcating code used for ensuring thread safety.
    • Continuing the former meant code duplication.
    • Switching to the latter meant that flexibility of letting the user decide which function he wants to call is thrown away.
    • I finally took the middle way decision which didn't had any of the above problem.
      • All calls to the mutex are now through a wrapper which directs the call to the mutex functionality if HAVE_STD_THREAD is defined or else to a dummy function which does nothing.
  • In the thread safe counterpart of openFile, openFileSafely fine grain locking was done.
    • Mutexes were added at to safe-gaurd their respective data structures
    • Functionalities such as lazyInstMgr::registerDataSection were converted into a two step process.
    • Since it was now possible that an element of the _dataSection vector can be null the destructor for lazyInstMgr was changed accordingly.

1 June (Sun):

  • The test for checking thread safety was still failing, due to assertion failure in the cllazyfile parser.
    • It was found that this is due to a static variable in sectionReader::getDelimitedKeyword. The function was reworked and named fillDelimitedKeyword. The functions taking dependence on this were slightly modified to reflect this change.
    • Another static variable in p21HeaderSectionReader was identified and tackled with.
  • The test finally succeeded. Some performance statistics
    • File A: 3tnv70-asa.stp (\~45mb) was taken from the site examples.
    • File B: gtc01-mme01_asm.stp (\~45mb) was taken from http://downloads.openmoko.org/developer/CAD/Neo1973_IGES_STEP.zip
    • It took \~9 seconds if we tried to open either File A or File B.
    • It took \~17 seconds if we tried to open File A and then File B.
    • It took \~12.5 seconds when both the files were opened in parallel.

2 June (Mon):

  • The locking in loadInstanceSafely( instanceID ) was made finer.

    • Double checking was also done to enhance performance in cases in which say:

      1. Thread A is creating a realObject belonging to instance x.

      2. Thread B comes and wants to get an object belonging to instance y.

      3. If instance y has been already loaded then Thread B doesn't have to wait for Thread A. This is now handled.

      4. The work done from 29th May was organized into different commits and pushed to github.

3 June (Tue)

  • Going through the code in src/clstepcode
    • Learnt about the various files in the library.
    • Several Problems were identified:
      • The amount of code is huge.
      • What makes the problem worse is that there are lots of small classes. Since a TDD approach is being followed it means that there will have to be lots of test files.

4-6 June (Thu - Fri)

  • Very Little work done due to family reunion + travelling.

Week 4

7 June (Sat)

  • Unsuccesfully tried to figure out a way to run the tests such as src/clstepcore/test/test_operators_STEPattribute.cc on my remote machine.
  • Created a mutex wrapper: sc_mutex that will contain std::mutex and call its lock, unlock function if HAVE_STD_THREAD is enabled. If on the other hand HAVE_STD_THREAD is disabled, the wrapper will not contain std:mutefx and will call the dummy lock, unlock functions.
    • I will modify cllazyfile to take dependency on it later.

8 June (Sun)

  • Changed the branch name from hj/cllazyfile-thread-safety to hj/thread-safety. Now I will keep all the thread-safe code in one branch.
  • Modified the CMakeLists.txt of each of the library.
    • It was also found that some of the tests used the header files directly. Hence the cmake files of such libraries will have to be changed when required.

9 June (Mon)

  • The test for checking thread safety of instmgr was started.
    • The functions whose thread safety would be checked was append and delete functions.
    • Three test scenrios were checked:
      1. Two threads appending SDAI_Application_instance pointers to the same instmgr.
      2. Two threads deleting SDAI_Application_instance pointers to the same instmgr.
      3. One thread appeding SDAI_Application_instancepointers and other thread trying to delete some other pointers from the same instmgr.

10 June (Tue)

  • The test for checking thread safety of instmgr was completed. It was named as InstMgr_thread_safety_test and put into src/clstepcore directory.
    1. In each of the test cases before the insertion / deletion happens on one InstMgr sequentially and other parallely.
    2. These two are later compared for any disparity.
  • On each run either InstMgr_thread_safety_test failed gracefully (i.e a disparity was found between two InstMgr) or a seg. fault was encountered.

11 June (Wed)

  • Their was some duplicate code in instmgr class for GetSTEPentity function. Even though the function is obselete, the duplicated code was removed.
  • Code was written to make InstMgr Append and Delete function thread safe.
    • This involved some amount of code refractoring and introduction of a mutex.
    • A compilation error on invoking make prevented any further progress.

12 June (Thu)

  • Was able to finally compile yesterdays code by changing the file SC_CXX_schema_macros.cmake in the cmake directory.
  • The InstMgr_thread_safety_test passed in all three cases. Some incorrect code was also corrected.

13 June (Fri)

  • I decided that I will work in the GenNode related classes (GenNodeArray, GenNodeList) defined in clutils and the classes which inherit from them:
    • MgrNode: MgrNodeArray, MgrNodeArraySorted, MgrNodeList
    • DispNode: DispNodeList
  • Some of the code was very badly written (seeing from a thread safety perspective)
    • Ex. The Remove function in GenNode modified the state of other GenNode objects. Typically this should be done by the GenNodeList class.

Week 5

14 June (Sat)

  • Added containingList pointer in GenericNode. This pointer will point to the list of which the node is part of.
    • This pointer will used whenever the GenericNode or its descendent want to perform any operation on the other Nodes.
    • Such operations will now be directed to the list function whose responsibility would be to ensure proper locking.
    • Added assertions and checks regarding the same.
    • Also used containingList to remove duplicate code.
  • Some of the code was moved between files, to make the code neater.

15 June (Sun)

  • Organized the work done until 12 June into commits and pushed it into the github repository.
    • This was done so that Mark could review one of the changes
  • Added sc_recursive_mutex.
    • This will be used to handle situtations where there are 2 public APIs (say A, B).
      • Both modify an internal data structure, hence lock it.
      • However one API depends on other. (say B depends on A)
    • Earlier In such cases I used to make a helper function (H) which would do the main job. A and B would depend on H and can be individually locked.
    • Having a recursive lock would eleminate the need to do the above.
      • Made instmgr lock recursive.

16 June (Mon)

  • Corrected locking in getApplication_Instance. Earlier (due to my carrelessness) their was a possibilty that a thread might never release the lock.
  • Modified the insert function in gen/mgr/disp lists.
    • The new insert function checks whether the existing node belongs to the same list or not. If it doesn't it does nothing and returns false.
    • This will be very helpful when introducing thread safety in list structures. Ex. take the scenerio:
      • Thread A wants to insert x after y.
      • Meanwhile Thread B removes y from current list.
      • In such a case the thread A's insertion fails.
  • Finally introduced recursive_mutex in gennodelist. mgrnodelist which inherits gennodelist was also changed accordingly.

17 June (Tue)

  • Added GetGenNode function in GenNodeArray.
    • This function is a safer couterpart to [] function.
    • Replaced call to the [] function with calls to GetGenNode function.
    • Was feasable since the former is only used for getting GenericNode pointers.
  • Minor refractoring in MgrNodeArray This will be helpful when we introduce a mutex in GenNodeArray.

18 June (Wed)

  • Added std_recursive_mutex in GenNodeArray. Also modified classes which inherit the above accordingly
  • Organized the work done from 14 June into commits and pushed it into the github repository.

19 June (Thu)

  • Could not work, as I devoted my the whole day to my M.Tech Project.

20 June (Fri)

  • Next I decided to work on ExpDict.h/.cc/.inline.cc files. These define classes representing descriptors for EXPRESS schemas, entities, attributes, and types.
    • These file have around \~50 classes. On going through each of them it was found that the potentially thread unsafe classes can be divided into categories.
      1. Classes which define a set data structure for a subclass of Dictionary_instance
      2. Classes which inherit from SingleLinkList class.
      3. Some subclasses of Dictionary_instance which take dependency on std::vector structures or multiple structres which should be consistent with each other.

Week 6

21 June (Sat)

  • Added class Dictionary_instance__set. This class is intended to be a superclass of all the *__set classes.
    • These classes are:
      • Explicit_item_id__set
      • Implicit_item_id__set
      • Interface_spec__set
      • Global_rule__set
      • Uniqueness_rule__set
    • Lot of duplicated code was removed this way.
    • Making Dictionary_instance__set thread safe would now ensure thread safety of the above subclasses.

22 June (Sun)

  • Made Where_rule__list a subclass of Dictionary_instance__set, as it was found to have similar features.
  • Work done from 19 June was organized into commits and pushed to github.

23 June (Mon)

  • Some missing code in yesterday commits was added and submitted to github.
  • Made Dictionary_instance__set thread safe by adding a mutex.
  • Made SingleLinkList class thread safe by adding a mutex.
    • Also a cmake file was modified inorder to compile the above changes.
  • Made Schema thread safe by using 3 mutexes to protect the _function_list, _procedure_list & _global_rules data structures.
    • The first two are vectors.
    • The last is already a thread safe structure, however its being lazy-initilized hence a mutex is needed.
  • Made Global_rule thread safe by using a mutex.
    • Thread safety in functions entities_ and where_rules_ was being violated

24 June (Tue)

  • The next focus was the Registry class. A test to check the thread safety of Registry class was created.
    • In it the Entity, Schema and Type operations are tested.
    • For each, there are 3 checks: Add-Add, Remove-Remove, Add-Remove. ** For every check the two operation are done first serially and then parallely. Their results are then compared.
  • The test when run either gracefully failed or gave a segFault in every check.

25 June (Wed)

  • The curious case of hashtables: The Registry class took dependency on a hashtable data structure defined in clutils/sc_hash.h.
    • These hashtable methods appeared to pass the thread safety check, when the number of elements which were to be inserted in the hash table were small.
    • However when lots of element were added into a hash table, an internal function of the hashtable SC_HASHexpand_table is called which is thread unsafe.
    • Hence it was decided to put a fat-lock around the hash-table.
  • Made Registry Entity, Schema and Type operations thread safe by adding a mutex for each.
    • All the checks in Registry_thread_safety_test now pass.
  • The code written from 23 June was organized into commits and pushed to github.

26 June (Thu)

  • Wrote a blog on my mid-term progress: midterm
  • Devoted the rest of the day on M.Tech. Project.

27 June (Fri)

  • Devoted the day to M.Tech Project.

Week 7

28 June (Sat)

  • Divided the rest of stepcore library into three parts.

    1. Those who define STEP interface. (i.e the STEP*.h/.cc files)
    2. Those who define sdai interface. (i.e the STEP*.h/.cc files)

    3. Classes listed in complexSupport.h and their implementation in the associated *.cc files

    4. It was decided that functions declared in read_func.h/.cc and print.cc files wont be made thread safe as they were not a part of the class and thus didn't had any data structures to protect.

    5. Duplicate code was removed in STEPaggregrate. STEPaggregrate and its superclass SingleLinkList.cc had the same destructor.

29 June (Sun)

  • Made the classes defined in STEPaggregrate.h thread safe.
    • The function which was identified as a potential thread unsafe function was the ShallowCopy. This function was common to all the subclasses of STEPaggregrate.
    • Thread safety was ensured by relying on the mtx defined in SingleLinkList. For this reason the mutex was redefined in the public scope, as inside the ShallowCopy nodes belonging to another instance were iterated upon.
  • Efforts were also made to condense all the ShallowCopy functions into one, so as to decrease the code amount. This attempt however failed since the function differed slighly in each of the subclasses.

30 June (Mon)

  • I had to prepare a presentation for my M.Tech project meeting with company funding my project.

1 July (Tue)

  • Instead of moving to STEPattribute, I decided to focus my attention to the classes declared in complexSupport.h.
    • Started with Entnode. It was quite tricky since unlike other node-list data structure implementation in the STEP libraries, Entnode didn't had any covering list (i.e a class with variable such as head, tail etc through which the list data-structure could be accessed)

2 July (Wed)

  • Made EntNode of complexSupport.h thread safe.
    • For this I used a recursive mutex in a shared manner. The pointer to this mutex was kept with every node.
    • This shared mutex was initialized when a specialized EntNode constructor (responsible for creating multiple EntNodes) was called
    • The shared mutex would be deleted when the destructor of an EntNode having a live mutex pointer was called.

3 July (Thu)

  • M.Tech project presentation with the company.

4 July (Fri)

  • Made SubSuperIterators.h thread safe.
    • This was done by introducing a recursive mutex meant to protect the std::deque 'q' and unsigned integer 'position'
  • Also Removed duplicated code in SubSuperIterators.cc

Week 8

5 July (Sat)

  • Next I focussed towards making EntList thread safe. Apparently this was very difficult.
    • Tactics which involved coarse grain locking could not be used due to the presence of appendList function in subclass MultList.
    • Tactics which involved fine grain locking could not be used as some of the functions like firstNot iterated over the next pointer and lastNot iterated over the prev pointer.

6-8 July (Sun-Tue)

  • Thought about the EntList problem. Discussed with my mentor. Posted my problem in the scl-dev group.
  • Horror strikes!! While talking to my mentor I realized that I had forgotten to run the 230 unit tests while making my commits.
    • Now, when I ran them, about half of them were failing!!
    • The log file was traced to get clues about why so many test failed.
    • Various commits were checked out to find what was the bad commit. It was found out that some of the tests which failed were due to the recent uncommited work. These mistakes were quickly rectified.

9 July (Wed)

  • Changes in cmake to build lazy tests. Some changes in cmakefiles had caused the test associated with lazy_test to stop building. Those changes were reviewed and corrected.
  • Corrected SingleLinkedList mtx bug. The mtx is converted into sc_recursive_mtx deleted in the destructor

10 July (Thu)

  • Organized most of the work done from 26th July into commits and pushed them to github.
  • Some of the later tests (about 4) were still failing due todue to assertions failures inside a mutex lock. No success as of today.

11 July (Fri)

  • Had to devote most of the whole day to checking major scripts (a part of my teaching assistant duties. Thankfully now I am free from that)

Week 9

12 July (Sat)

  • Modified add_schema_dependent_test module.
    • The assertion failures before was due to the test file not being equipped with the HAVE_STD_THREAD macro.
    • The CMakeFile associated with add_schema_dependent_test was changed and all the tests except of 'test_inverse_attr3' are passing.

13 July (Sun)

  • Made STEPattributeList thread safe.
    • The functions STEPattributeList::[] & STEPattributeList::push were identified as vulnerable.
    • Instead of declaring a new mutex to protect the state, the mutex defined in its superclass SingleLinkList was used.
  • Redefined GetMiEntity API belonging to SDAI_Application_instance class.
    • The function now accepts const char * (instead of char *) as parameter.

14 July (Mon)

  • Removed the infinite recursion bug in STEPattribute.
    • This bug was identified few days ago when I was going through the code. Finally I was able to discuss it with the mentor.
    • The bug would surface if a STEPattribute instance which has been redefined, has its ShallowCopy function invoked.

15 July (Tue)

  • Added test for checking thread safety of SDAI_Application_instance class.
    • This test would check thread safety for AppendMultInstance & GetMiEntity functions in class SDAI_Application_instance by using two threads two invoke AppendMultInstance on the same SDAI_Application_instance object. A third thread would call GetMiEntity simultaneously.
    • Rest of the functions were not checked since the locking in them was trivial.
    • The test failed on the original code.

16 July (Wed)

  • Made SDAI_Application_instance thread safe.
    • This was done by introducing a mutex for each SDAI_Application_instance.
    • AppendMultInstance was made thread safe by doing hand-over-hand locking.
    • GetMiEntity was made thread safe acquiring locks in increasing order and releasing locks in decreasing order.
    • The checks in sdaiApplication_instance_thread_safety_test now pass.

17 July (Thu)

  • Travelling home.

18 July (Fri)

  • Work done from 13 July was divided into different commits and pushed into github.

Week 10

19 July (Sat)

  • Locking was done in ExpDict.cc.
    • There were some functions in ExpDict.cc that were not properly locked before.

20 July (Sun)

  • Made sdaiSelect::CanBe( BASE_TYPE ) thread safe.
  • Started strategizing how to make STEPcomplex thread safe.

21 July (Mon)

  • Travelling back to university.

22 July (Tue)

  • Work done from 19 July was organized into different commits and pushed into github.
  • Fixed locking in sdaiApplication_instance.cc. The STEPattributeList data was being iterated and modiefied by the SDAI_Application_instance class without invoking the mutex of the STEPattribute class. This was fixed in this commit.
  • Minor STEPcomplex optimization.
    • Collapsed some if conditions into a while condition without changing the semantics

23 July (Wed)

  • Made STEPcomplex thread safe.
    • The assumption used was that STEPcomplex class wont in future provide an API through which threads can remove / insert a STEPcomplex node.

    • Three already declared mutexes were used in for this purpose:

      1. A recursive mutex for each STEPcomplex node (borrowed from the superclass SDAI_Application_instance)
      2. A recursive mutex belonging to AttrDescriptorList class (originally defined in SingleLinkList class)

      3. A recursive shared mutex belonging to EntNode class.

      4. The fixed order between the locks was: (2) > (1). (3) was independent.

24 July (Thu)

  • Work done from 22 July was organized into different commits and pushed into github.
  • Thread safety in EntList.
    • Under the assumptions that an EntList object cannot be inserted in between two EntList objects and cannot be removed from a list of EntList objects, making this class thread safe became trivially easy.
    • One mutex per EntList object was introduced to support appending of EntList objects. This feature would be used by its subclass (MultList)

25 July (Fri)

  • Thread Safety in SimpleList
    • Used sharedMtxP defined in EntNode class to protect EntNode list structure which was being accessed in functions of SimpleList class
  • Thread safety in MultList
    • The mutex defined in the superclass EntList was used in the function appendList.

Week 11

26 July (Sat)

  • Thread safety in JoinList, AndList & AndOrList
    • sharedMtxP of EntNode class was invoked to keep the list of EntNode consistent whenever the EntNode list was being used multiple times in a function belonging to any of the above classes.

27 July (Sun)

  • Thread safety in OrList
    • Strategy adopted was similar to AndList. However the mutex belonging to the superclass EntList was used to protect various counters (choiceCount, choice) used by OrList

28 July (Mon)

  • Thread safety in ComplexList
    • Like the classes before, used sharedMtxP to protect the EntNode list whenver it was being iterated upon.
    • Also added a public mutex to protect the public next pointer. Resposibilty of using it will fall to the class which is using next pointer (ComplexCollect)

29-31 July, 1 August (Tue-Fri)

  • Was down with fever (the first couple of days), followed by eyes pain and weakness. Was advised to take a bed rest.

Week 12

2 August (Sat)

  • Thread Safety in ComplexCollect
    • A mutex was introduced to proctect the counter and the pointer to clists.
    • The insert and remove functions were tricky to make thread safe as clists may or may-not have been initialized. Hand-over-hand locking was used.
    • Note: In the function ComplexCollect::supports( EntNode ), there was a piece of code present in which the next and prev pointer of an EntList were being modified.
      • This could have ruined the thread safe strategy for making EntList thread safe. (violated our assumption)
      • The reason it didn't was that, that EntList was created locally.

3 August (Sun)

  • Work done from 24 July was organized into commits and pushed to github.
  • Made ReplicateList in cleditor thread safe.
    • Used mtxP of the superclass SingleLinkList to ensure thread safety
  • Thread safety in CmdMgr of cleditor

4 August (Mon)

  • Not much work done as it was a heavy day in college

5 August (Tue)

  • Made DirObj of clutils thread safe.
    • This was achieved introducing a mutex in the DirObj class.
    • Course-Level (fat) Locking was done only in publically accessed function.

6 August (Wed)

  • Work done from 3 August was organized into commits and pushed to github.

7 August (Thu)

  • Converted GetKeyword to FillKeyword.
    • In the original function a static string was being used.
    • The dependency on the static string was removed by passing a string as a parameter from the caller to callee, so that the function could operate without worrying about thread safety.
    • The function name change mimics the change in the semantics of the function.
    • The various callers were modified to incorperate this change

8 August (Fri)

  • Optimized ReadReal. Replaced calls to input stream peek & get with judicious use of get.
  • Work done from 7 August was organized into commits and pushed to github.

Week 13

9 August (Sat)

  • No changes were done to Sdai* files of the cleditor library as those files were generated by exp2cxx.
    • Any modifications would be lost if exp2cxx was used to regenerate them.
  • Went through STEPfile class to determine the areas of thread safety violations.

10 August (Sun)

  • Inspired by a comment written by a developer, removed istream *in2 from STEPfile::AppendFile.
    • Originally for the second pass a new istream (in2) was being created and the .step file was being opened again.
    • The above was prevented by directing the original istream (in) to the beggining of the .step file.
    • The work was commited and pushed into github.

11 August (Mon)

  • Protected _headerId in STEPfile (cleditor).
    • _headerId is a counter used in STEPfile class.
    • Its value could change in ReadHeader and ReadExchangeFile methods.
    • Hence a mutex was introduced specially to protect it.
  • Added GetApplication_instanceFromFileId method in InstMgr class.
    • The SDAI_Application_instance * GetApplication_instance( MgrNode * ) andMgrNode * FindFileId( int ) methods of class InstMgr were often being used together in the class STEPfile.
    • Therefore a special function was created in class InstMgr of the form SDAI_Application_instance * GetApplication_instanceFromFileId( int ) which would take care of locking and consistency issues.
    • This function was then used in STEPfile.

12 August (Tue)

  • Safe InstMgr iteration in STEPfile.
    • Variables of class InstMgr were being iterated upon in class STEPfile through the variables _instances (including its get function instances()) and _headerInstances.
    • The mtx defined in InstMgr was invoked to make them safe.

13 August (Wed)

  • Safe attributes iteration in STEPfile.
    • This was done by using mutexes defined for SDAI_Application_instance & SingleLinkList classes.
  • It was decided that as this class acts like a parser, further locking in this class would be dependent upon how it will be used in a multithreaded way.
    • The current structure of the class was restricting any potential multithreaded use.
    • Example: The variable like _fileName restricts this class to parse only one file at a time. If we want to parse more then one then this would have to change.
  • Thread safety in SDAI_Application_instance__set
    • This was done by introducing a recursive_mutex in the SDAI_Application_instance__set class.
  • Work done from 11 August was organized into commits and pushed to github.

14 Augest (Thu)

  • Removed compile time warning from the previous day commit.
  • Added class SDAI__set in cldai library
    • It was noticed that some classes in this library which were very similar: SDAI_DAObject__set, SDAI_Entity_extent__set & SDAI_Model_contents__list
    • The logic common to these classes was indentified and removed, a new class (SDAI__set) was created which had that common logic.
    • The original classes were made to inherit from the new class.
    • This removed duplicated code and also made making changes (for thread safety) easier.
  • Made SDAI__set thread safe
    • This was done by introducing a mutex in the SDAI__set class.

15 Augest (Fri)

  • Added SDAI__set::Remove( SDAI_ptr ) function
    • The semantics of this function would be similar to SDAI__set::Remove( SDAI__set::Index( SDAI_ptr ) ). The only difference would be that in the new function both the operations are done under a single lock.
    • Wherever the old Remove( Index( SDAI_ptr ) ) code snippet was found, it was replaced by the new Remove( SDAI_ptr ) function.
  • One more subclass of SDAI__set
    • Adding the Remove( SDAI_ptr ) API to SDAI__set made SDAI_Application_instance__set a candidate for inheriting common logic from SDAI__set.
    • Note: This class was already made thread safe in one of the previous commits. This commit only removes the now apparent duplicate code.
  • Work done from 14 August was organized into commits and pushed to github.

Week 14

16 Augest (Sat)

  • On the advice of starseeker I decided to perform the acid test by running my version of stepcode through step-g converter.
    • Set up brlcad.
    • Ran step-g converter on a sample ap203 file.

17 Augest (Sun)

  • Tried to run step-g using my stepcode version. Unfortunately I was not successful partially due to the following reasons.
    • To start with, a lot of time was wasted, identifying the CMake file in brlcad in which I should set CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS (or equivalent) with -std=c++0x so as to run my version of stepcode which uses std::mutex & std::thread
    • Secondly apart from the changes I did in stepcode through hj/thread-safety branch the stepcode version in brlcad/src/other/stepcode had many differences.
      • It initially gave many build errors.
      • When it finally ran it gave a seg-fault on the piece of code I have never changed.
  • Added NO_REGISTRY macro to lazy_thread_safety_test
    • lazy_thread_safety_test had 2 checks which were schema dependent. These checks are now wrapped in NO_REGISTRY macro.

18 Augest (Mon)

  • Utilized sc_mutex in cllazyfile
    • Earlier std::mutex was being used.
    • It was replaced with sc_mutex which acts like a wrapper to std::mutex.
  • Added sc_thread.h in clutils
    • The class acts like a wrapper to some of the thread functionalities (like get_id()) which is being used in stepcode.
    • If the compiler does not supports thread functionalities then this class provides dummy types and functionalities.
    • instMgrAdapter & lazyTypes.h were modified so as to take dependency on sc_thread.
  • As a result of above two changes HAVE_STD_THREAD macros were removed from cllazyfile library *.cc and *.h as classes sc_thread and sc_mutex internally handles the macros.
  • Added exit(success/fail) in thread-safety test
  • Organized the work done from 17 augest into commits and pushed into github
  • Merged remote-tracking branch origin/master into hj/thread-safety
    • As I had never merged the master branch into the branch I was working upon ever since I started working on this project, I was 109 commits ahead and 23 commits behind the master branch.
    • I merged those the 23 commits into my hj/thread-safety branch. The only conflict was in src/clstepcore/instMgr.cc which was handled by me.