Making your module threadsafe

Since 5.6.0, Perl has had support for a new type of threads called interpreter threads (ithreads). These threads can be used explicitly and implicitly.

Ithreads work by cloning the data tree so that no data is shared between different threads. These threads can be used by using the threads module or by doing fork() on win32 (fake fork() support). When a thread is cloned all Perl data is cloned, however non-Perl data cannot be cloned automatically. Perl after 5.7.2 has support for the CLONE special subroutine. In CLONE you can do whatever you need to do, like for example handle the cloning of non-Perl data, if necessary. CLONE will be called once as a class method for every package that has it defined (or inherits it). It will be called in the context of the new thread, so all modifications are made in the new area. Currently CLONE is called with no parameters other than the invocant package name, but code should not assume that this will remain unchanged, as it is likely that in future extra parameters will be passed in to give more information about the state of cloning.

If you want to CLONE all objects you will need to keep track of them per package. This is simply done using a hash and Scalar::Util::weaken().

Perl after 5.8.7 has support for the CLONE_SKIP special subroutine. Like CLONE, CLONE_SKIP is called once per package; however, it is called just before cloning starts, and in the context of the parent thread. If it returns a true value, then no objects of that class will be cloned; or rather, they will be copied as unblessed, undef values. This provides a simple mechanism for making a module threadsafe; just add sub CLONE_SKIP { 1 } at the top of the class, and DESTROY() will be now only be called once per object. Of course, if the child thread needs to make use of the objects, then a more sophisticated approach is needed.

Like CLONE, CLONE_SKIP is currently called with no parameters other than the invocant package name, although that may change. Similarly, to allow for future expansion, the return value should be a single 0 or 1 value.