Subj : Re: JS_THREADSAFE required for clients of threadsafe js32.dll?
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : Jens Thiele
Date : Tue Nov 16 2004 03:53 pm

Brendan Eich schrieb:
>> #ifdef JS_THREADSAFE
>> #define JS_NewRuntime(maxbytes) JS_Init(maxbytes, 1)
>> #else
>> #define JS_NewRuntime(maxbytes) JS_Init(maxbytes, 0)
>> #endif
> 
> 
> We can't change any API, including a macro one.
> 
> Without a new API, we can't automate this consistency check.  Do we need
> a new API here, or just better docs?  I bet real money that a new API
> will not be used by those who need the better docs.
> 
> /be

For me it would be more important to be able to detect wether the
installed library was compiled with JS_THREADSAFE at configure/compile
time (in configure scripts) and in cross-compilation setups runtime
checks don't help with this.
For linux/unixish platforms I would souggest using pkg-config (of course
this only works as long as the pkg-config file matches the installed
library). This could also be done by distributors.

But probably all linux distributions will ship the library compiled with
JS_THREADSAFE anyway. (debian does - though the package maintainer is
willing to add a version compiled without JS_THREADSAFE).
^-- is this correct English?

hmm - just thought about this:
A solution which would work at compile/link-time would be to add a
function only to one version and there are already such functions:
JS_BeginRequest for example

=> a configure check only needs to check wether this function is
available to detect if the library was compiled with JS_THREADSAFE and
then add -DJS_THREADSAFE to to CFLAGS.

using autoconf - something like this should work:
AC_CHECK_LIB($SMJS, JS_BeginRequest, CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -DJS_THREADSAFE")

btw. is there some consensus for the library name?
debian uses libsmjs since another javascript interpreter (ngs) got
packaged first and is using libjs.so
(hmm and there is another version of spidermonkey - libmozjs.so provided
by the mozilla-browser package)

Greetings
Jens

.