ScalaSTM incorporated in Scala distribution?

[David Joyce]

Hi,

I have read the various threads here, but still a little confused about ScalaSTM's inclusion in a Scala distribution.

Is this earmarked for the 2.10 release.

How many implementations will be supported?

Thanks,

David

[Nathan Bronson]

David,

ScalaSTM is working fine as library on maven central, so it is not included in the core Scala distribution. The extra download size from putting it in the core will be worth it only if parts of the compiler or other standard libraries need it as a dependency.

Multiple implementations are supported, but the bundled CCSTM backend is the only one that has been brought to production quality and released, or that is currently being developed (to my knowledge).

Thanks,

  Nathan

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Nathan Grasso Bronson
ngbr...@gmail.com

[David Joyce]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the reply. This seems to differ so from some of the other discussions I saw in the other threads. 

One other question so to confirm I understand this correctly. The Scala "language" itself required no changes to support ScalaSTM? It is just a standalone library that can be used with any version of Scala?

Thanks,

David

[Nathan Bronson]

David,

To confirm, ScalaSTM (including the bundled CCSTM backend) is just a library. It required no changes to the Scala language or the Scala compiler. It is usable in Scala >= 2.8.1, and also usable (in a less concise form) from Java.

A backend that performs bytecode rewriting (or that was integrated into the JVM's JIT) has the potential to extract more performance, but it is a deceptively large engineering effort to handle all of the cases well.

Thanks,

  Nathan

[Hanns Holger Rutz]

I'd be excited to see what can be done with macros and scala-stm; that would still not touch the compiler and maybe not even require a compiler plugin now, but be more lightweight....

best, .h.h.

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