Documentation

Like forkIO, this sparks off a new thread to run the IO computation passed as the first argument, and returns the ThreadId of the newly created thread.

However, forkOS creates a bound thread, which is necessary if you need to call foreign (non-Haskell) libraries that make use of thread-local state, such as OpenGL (see Control.Concurrent).

Using forkOS instead of forkIO makes no difference at all to the scheduling behaviour of the Haskell runtime system. It is a common misconception that you need to use forkOS instead of forkIO to avoid blocking all the Haskell threads when making a foreign call; this isn't the case. To allow foreign calls to be made without blocking all the Haskell threads (with GHC), it is only necessary to use the -threaded option when linking your program, and to make sure the foreign import is not marked unsafe.

Like forkIOWithUnmask, but the child thread is a bound thread, as with forkOS.

Returns True if the calling thread is bound, that is, if it is safe to use foreign libraries that rely on thread-local state from the calling thread.

Run the IO computation passed as the first argument. If the calling thread is not bound, a bound thread is created temporarily. runInBoundThread doesn't finish until the IO computation finishes.

You can wrap a series of foreign function calls that rely on thread-local state with runInBoundThread so that you can use them without knowing whether the current thread is bound.

Run the IO computation passed as the first argument. If the calling thread is bound, an unbound thread is created temporarily using forkIO. runInBoundThread doesn't finish until the IO computation finishes.

Use this function only in the rare case that you have actually observed a performance loss due to the use of bound threads. A program that doesn't need its main thread to be bound and makes heavy use of concurrency (e.g. a web server), might want to wrap its main action in runInUnboundThread.

Note that exceptions which are thrown to the current thread are thrown in turn to the thread that is executing the given computation. This ensures there's always a way of killing the forked thread.

True if bound threads are supported. If rtsSupportsBoundThreads is False, isCurrentThreadBound will always return False and both forkOS and runInBoundThread will fail.