TLS, threads, and workers

[Paul Syverson]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 03:23:35AM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> Nick and I built a plan today. We're going to switch to TLS for links.
> This has a number of related design fallouts.

I hope this is a plan rather than a done decision at this point.  I am
concerned that this has not been adequately discussed. I should also
say up front that I am unqualified to discuss details given my
complete ignorance of coding but I think my high-level points are
still cogent.

I am very hesitant to move to a threading model without a clear idea
that relevant problems can be handled. I was especially concerned
about portability as soon as it was brought up and was not heartened
to see Ben's comment that FreeBSD handles threads poorly. I'm also
skittish because we started using threads in a previous incarnation of
onion routing because it seemed to make alot of sense but had to
switch back because of assorted problems, portability, crypto
libraries we wanted to allow people to choose from weren't thread
safe, and so on.  I would like to hear a more about why it is thought
that these issues will not be big problems this time.

aloha,
Paul