1443. Imposed happens-before edges are not made transitive

Section: 32 [thread] Status: Dup Submitter: BSI Opened: 2010-08-25 Last modified: 2016-01-28

Priority: Not Prioritized

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Duplicate of: 1442

Discussion:

Addresses GB-122

At various points in the standard new edges are added to happens-before, for example 27.2.3:2 adds happens-before edges between writes and reads from a stream:

If one thread makes a library call a that writes a value to a stream and, as a result, another thread reads this value from the stream through a library call b such that this does not result in a data race, then a happens before b.

Happens-before is defined in 1.10:11 in a deliberate way that makes it not explicitly transitively closed. Adding edges to happens-before directly, as in 27.2.3:2, does not provide transitivity with sequenced-before or any other existing happens-before edge. This lack of transitivity seems to be unintentional. In order to achieve transitivity we suggest each edge be added to inter-thread-happens-before as a synchronises-with edge (as per conversation with Hans Boehm). In the standard, each use of the words "happens-before" should be replaced with the words "synchronizes-with" in the following sentences:

27.2.3:2, 30.3.1.2:6, 30.3.1.5:7, 30.6.4:7, 30.6.9:5, 30.6.10.1:23

Proposed resolution:

Request the concurrency working group to determine if changes are needed