# Proper maintenance and care of multi-threading locks

The following strategies are used to ensure that the code is dead-lock free (generally by addressing the 4th Coffman condition: circular wait).

> 1. structure code such that only one lock will need to be acquired at a time
> 2. always acquire shared locks in the same order, as given by the table below
> 3. avoid constructs that expect to need unrestricted recursion

## Locks

Below are all of the locks that exist in the system and the mechanisms for using them that avoid the potential for deadlocks (no Ostrich algorithm allowed here):

The following are definitely leaf locks (level 1), and must not try to acquire any other lock:

> - safepoint

>   > Note that this lock is acquired implicitly by `JL_LOCK` and `JL_UNLOCK`. use the `_NOGC` variants to avoid that for level 1 locks.

>   > While holding this lock, the code must not do any allocation or hit any safepoints. Note that there are safepoints when doing allocation, enabling / disabling GC, entering / restoring exception frames, and taking / releasing locks.

> - shared_map

> - finalizers

> - pagealloc

> - gc_perm_lock

> - flisp

>   > flisp itself is already threadsafe, this lock only protects the `jl_ast_context_list_t` pool

The following is a leaf lock (level 2), and only acquires level 1 locks (safepoint) internally:

> - typecache

The following is a level 3 lock, which can only acquire level 1 or level 2 locks internally:

> - Method->writelock

>   but note that this is violated by staged functions!

The following is a level 4 lock, which can only recurse to acquire level 1, 2, or 3 locks:

> - MethodTable->writelock

>   but note that this is violated by staged functions!

The following is a proposed level 5 lock, which can only recurse to acquire locks at lower levels:

> - staged

>   > this theoretical lock would create a priority inversion from the method->writelock (level 3), but only prohibiting running any staging function in parallel (thus allowing temporary release of the MethodTable and Method locks)

The following is a level 6 lock, which can only recurse to acquire locks at lower levels:

> - codegen

The following is an almost root lock (level end-1), meaning only the root look may be held when trying to acquire it:

> - typeinf

>   > this one is perhaps one of the most tricky ones, since type-inference can be invoked from many points

The following is the root lock, meaning no other lock shall be held when trying to acquire it:

> - toplevel

>   > this should be held while attempting a top-level action (such as making a new type or defining a new method): trying to obtain this lock inside a staged function will cause a deadlock condition!

>   > additionally, it’s unclear if any code can safely run in parallel with an arbitrary toplevel expression, so it may require all threads to get to a safepoint first

## Broken Locks

The following locks are broken:

- toplevel

  > doesn’t exist right now

  > fix: create it

- codegen

  > recursive (through `static_eval`), but caller might also be holding locks (due to staged functions)

  > other issues?

  > fix: prohibit codegen while holding any other lock (possibly by checking `ptls->current_task->locks.len != 0` & explicitly check the locks that are OK to hold simultaneously)?

- typeinf

  > not certain of whether there are issues here or what they are. staging functions, of course, are a source of deadlocks here.

  > fix: unknown

- staged

  > possible solution to prevent staged functions from causing deadlock.

  > this theoretical lock would create a priority inversion such that the Method and MethodTable write locks could be released by ensuring that no staging functions can run in parallel allow this level 5 lock to protect staged function conflicts (a level 3 operation)

  > fix: create it

## Shared Global Data Structures

These data structures each need locks due to being shared mutable global state. It is the inverse list for the above lock priority list. This list does not include level 1 leaf resources due to their simplicity.

MethodTable modifications (def, cache, kwsorter type) : MethodTable->writelock

Type declarations : toplevel lock

Type application : typecache lock

Module serializer : toplevel lock

JIT : codegen lock

LLVMContext : codegen lock

Method
: Method->writelock
  - roots array (serializer and codegen)
  - invoke / specializations / tfunc modifications