[Vm-dev] Why isn't signalSemaphoreWithIndex() thread-safe?

[Andreas Raab]

Joshua Gargus wrote:
> Let's say that there are two native threads A and B that want to signal
> semaphores with indices 7 and 8, and that there are no other semaphores
> to be signalled.  Let's say that thread A is running until just after
> "semaphoresToSignalCountA" is incremented, but is interrupted before it
> assigns the index.  Then thread B runs, increments
> "semaphoresToSignalCountA" again (so its value is now 2), and sets
> foo->semaphoresToSignalA[2] = 8.  Then A resumes and stomps this value
> by setting foo->semaphoresToSignalA[2] = 7.  Now the semaphore with
> index 8 will not be signalled, and just as bad, the index stored in
> oo->semaphoresToSignalA[1] is now garbage that will be treated as a
> semaphore-index to signal.

On Windows, this case is handled by replacing signalSemaphoreWithIndex() 
by synchronizedSignalSemaphoreWithIndex() (sqWin32Window.c) in the vm 
proxy which serializes incoming signal requests.

Cheers,
   - Andreas