I'm trying to implement a barrier in Ada which has similar functionality to C's pthread_barrier_wait. Ada 2012 has Ada.Synchronous_Barriers but that's not available on my system (gnu-gnat on debian lenny).
More specifically, how can I get all waiting tasks to be released from a barrier at ~ the same time and, ideally, have one of these tasks do something special, without using Ada 2012? Below is a very sub-optimal implementation. What might be a better approach?
with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO; use Ada.Integer_Text_IO;
procedure foobar is
protected Synchronizer is
entry Ready_For_Action; -- prepares for tasks to wait at barrier
entry Wait_For_Release; -- barrier
-- do work here
entry Done; -- signals that all tasks are done
entry Wait_For_Others; -- prepares for prepare to wait at barrier
private
ready, active: Natural := 0;
-- two state variables seem to be needed as entry conditions can't
-- safely modify the condition variable as that influences wait
-- state in other tasks
end Synchronizer;
NUM_OBJECTS: constant := 3;
protected body Synchronizer is
entry Ready_For_Action when active = 0 is
begin
ready := ready + 1;
end Ready_For_Action;
--
entry Wait_For_Release when ready = NUM_OBJECTS is
begin
active := active + 1;
end Wait_For_Release;
--
entry Done when active = NUM_OBJECTS is
begin
ready := ready - 1;
end Done;
--
entry Wait_For_Others when ready = 0 is
begin
active := active - 1;
end wait_for_others;
--
end Synchronizer;
task type Foo(N: Natural);
task body Foo is
id: Natural := N;
begin
for iter in 1..3 loop
Synchronizer.Ready_For_Action;
Synchronizer.Wait_For_Release;
-- task N doing something special
if id = 1 then new_line; end if;
-- do stuff here
delay 0.1;
put(id); new_line;
-- re-sync
Synchronizer.Done;
Synchronizer.Wait_For_Others;
end loop;
end Foo;
Task1: Foo(1);
Task2: Foo(2);
Task3: Foo(3);
begin
Null;
end foobar;
Program output:
$ ./foobar
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
2
1
Maybe the 'count attribute on entries would be useful - is this the kind of thing you're looking for? Using task IDs to make one do something different seems sensible (or if it is sufficiently different you could just make a new task type).
No_Of_Tasks : Natural := 3;
--
protected Barrier is
entry Continue;
private
Released : Boolean := False;
end Barrier
--
protected body Barrier is
entry Continue when (Released or else Continue'count = No_Of_Tasks)
Released := Continue'count > 0; -- the last task locks the barrier again
end Continue
end Barrier