NSPR Module Description
NSPR provides platform independence for non-GUI operating system facilities. These facilities include threads, thread synchronization, normal file and network I/O, interval timing and calendar time, basic memory management (malloc and free) and shared library linking. A good portion of the library's purpose, and perhaps the primary purpose in the existing environment, is to provide the underpinnings of the Java VM, more or less mapping the sys layer that Java defines for the porting of the Java VM to various platforms. NSPR does go beyond that requirement in some areas and since it is also the platform independent layer for most of the servers produced by Netscape.
History
The current version of NSPR is known as NSPR 2.0. 1.0 was originally conceived
just to satisfy the requirements of porting Java to various host environments.
NSPR 2.0, an effort started over a year ago, builds on that original idea.
Very little is left of the original code. Many of the concepts have been
reformed, expanded and matured. But the basic intent lives on. Today NSPR
is still used as the platform dependent layer under Java, but its primary
application are clients written entirely in C or C++.
How It Works
NSPR's goal is to provide uniform service over a wide range of operating
system environments. It strives to not export the lowest common denominator,
but to exploit the best features of each operating system on which it runs,
and still provide a uniform service across a wide range of host offerings.
Threads
Threads are the major feature of NSPR. The industry's offering of threads is quite sundry. NSPR, while far from perfect, does provide a single API to which clients may program and expect reasonably consistent behavior. The operating systems provide everything from no concept of threading at all up to and including sophisticated, scalable and efficient implementations. NSPR makes as much use of what the systems offer as it can. It is the goal of NSPR that NSPR impose as little overhead as possible in accessing those appropriate system features.Thread synchronization
Thread synchronization is loosely based on Monitors as described by C.A.R. Hoare in Monitors: An operating system structuring concept, Communications of the ACM, 17(10), October 1974 and then formalized by Xerox' Mesa programming language ("Mesa Language Manual", J.G. Mitchell et al, Xerox PARC, CSL-79-3 (Apr 1979)). This mechanism provides the basic mutual exclusion (mutex) and thread notification facilities (condition variables) implemented by NSPR. Additionally, NSPR provides synchronization methods more suited for use by Java. The Java-like facilities include monitor reentrancy, implicit and tightly bound notification capabilities with the ability to associate the synchronization objects dynamically.I/O
NSPR's I/O is a slightly augmented BSD sockets model that allows arbitrary layering. It is was originally intended to export synchronous I/O methods only, relying on threads to provide the concurrency needed for complex applications. That method of operation is preferred though it is possible to configure the network I/O channels as non-blocking in the traditional sense.Network addresses
Part of NSPR deals with manipulation of network addresses. NSPR defines a network address object that is Internet Protocol (IP) centric. While the object is not declared as opaque, the API provides methods that allow and encourage clients to treat the addresses as polymorphic items. The goal in this area is to provide a migration path between IPv4 and IPv6. To that end it is possible to perform translations of ASCII strings (DNS names) into NSPR's network address structures, with no regard to whether the addressing technology is IPv4 or IPv6.Time
Timing facilities are available in two forms: interval timing and calendar functions.Interval timers are based on a free running, 32-bit, platform dependent resolution timer. Such timers are normally used to specify timeouts on I/O, waiting on condition variables and other rudimentary thread scheduling. Since these timers have finite namespace and are free running, they can wrap at any time. NSPR does not provide an epoch, but expects clients to deal with that issue. The granularity of the timers is guaranteed to be between 10 microseconds and 1 millisecond. This allows a timer period in excess of one day. But in order to deal with the wrap-around issue, only half that namespace may be trusted. Therefore, the minimal usable interval available from the timers is approximately 14 hours.
Calendar times are 64-bit signed numbers with units of microseconds. The epoch for calendar times is midnight, January 1, 1970, Greenwich Mean Time. Negative times extend to times before 1970, and positive numbers forward. Use of 64 bits allows a representation of times approximately in the range of -30000 to the year 30000. There is a structural representation (i.e., exploded view), routines to acquire the current time from the host system, and convert them to and from the 64-bit and structural representation. Additionally there are routines to convert to and from most well-known forms of ASCII into the 64-bit NSPR representation.