Re: Sync API for workers

Thanks for adding clarification. That CAN be true but it depends on the
environment [so far as I can see].

For example, such an API wrapper couldn't be built in today's client-side
JavaScript because the UI thread can't do a synchronous yielding "sleep"
but rather can only do a synchronous blocking wait, which means it wouldn't
yield to allow for the Worker thread to asynchronously respond and toggle
such a condition/mutex/etc. unless such can be synchronously requested by
the blocking thread from within the busy wait loop (e.g.
`processEvents();`) as browsers won't interrupt the synchronous flow of the
JS busy loop to trigger `onmessage` handlers for async messages sent from
the Worker.

If I'm mistaken, please consider providing a code snippet, gist, etc. to
get me back on track. Thanks!
On Oct 13, 2013 5:06 AM, "David Rajchenbach-Teller" <dteller@mozilla.com>
wrote:

> On 10/12/13 3:48 PM, James Greene wrote:
> > You can only build a synchronous API on top of an asynchronous API if
> > they are (a) running in separate threads/processes AND (b) the sync
> > thread can synchronously poll (busy loop) for the progress/completion of
> > the async thread.
>
> a) is necessary, but for b) it is sufficient for the sync thread to be
> able to sleep until a condition/mutex/... is lifted
>
>
> --
> David Rajchenbach-Teller, PhD
>  Performance Team, Mozilla
>