7 Managing OS-Level Threads (CS)

Chez Scheme functionality can only be accessed from OS-level threads that are known to the Chez Scheme runtime system. Otherwise, there’s a race condition between such an access and a garbage collection that is triggered by other threads.

A thread not created by Chez Scheme can be made known to the runtime system by activating it with Sactivate_thread. As long as a thread is active by not running Chez Scheme code, the thread prevents garbage collection in all other running threads. Deactivate a thread using Sdeactivate_thread. When a deactivated thread

Activates the current OS-level thread. An already-activated thread can be activated again, but each activating must be balanced by a decativation. The result is 0 if the thread was previously activated 1 otherwise.

Deactivates the current OS-level thread—or, at least, balances on activation, making the thread deactive if there are no remaining activations to balance with deactivation.

Releases any Chez Scheme resources associated with the current OS thread, which must have been previously activated by which must not be activated still.