The M and G of Go internals - three short questions

[Mateusz Czapliński]

Am I right if I assume that the cryptic "M" and "G" in Go internals
are used as shorthands for, respectively, word "thread" and word
"goroutine"? If so, then is the global "m" simply a container of some
data local to the current thread? and finally, could I ask what the
global "g" is, as (if the above are right) m->curg is apparently "the
currently running goroutine in the current thread"?

Thanks in advance
Mateusz Czapliński

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Mateusz Czapliński <czap...@gmail.com> writes:

They are both local to the current OS thread. As you say, m is
associated with the OS thread and g is associated with the goroutine. I
admit that I don't know why the global variable g exists; as you say, it
could be retrieved from the m structure with only minor loss of
efficiency. At least, I don't know of any cases where that would not
work.

Ian

[fango]

Maybe it's just for historical reason. In plan9 C compiler [1], they
are external registers.

[1] http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/compiler

Cheers,
Fango

[Russ Cox]

m is the current OS thread (m stands for machine;

in the Plan 9 kernel it was the variable name for the

current processor's Mach structure), like u in the 

original Unix kernel.

g is usually the current goroutine, but it's real purpose

is to be the definitive place to find the current stack

bounds during the stack growth check at the beginning

of most functions.

m->curg is often == g, but not always.  When

the stack is out of space and needs to be grown,

the code switches to g == m->g0 in order to have

some stack in which to work, and then it switches

back to m->curg when done.

It would be possible to introduce another field in m

instead of having the separate g, but that would

require another memory reference in each function

prologue, and the single word of memory is not 

expensive.

Russ

[Mateusz Czapliński]

Thanks!
Some leisure-time reading is going to be a bit easier now, at least
for me :)

greetz
Mateusz Czapliński