- Add some comments on thread storage with a brief explanation of what it is

  as well as what the motivation is for using it.
- Add a comment by the declaration of ast_inet_ntoa() noting that this function
  is not reentrant, and the result of a previous call to the function is no
  longer valid after calling it again.


git-svn-id: http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/trunk@48019 f38db490-d61c-443f-a65b-d21fe96a405b

2 files changed, 24 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/include/asterisk/threadstorage.h b/include/asterisk/threadstorage.h
index d13b616f0..4886d3520 100644
--- a/include/asterisk/threadstorage.h
+++ b/include/asterisk/threadstorage.h
@@ -21,7 +21,20 @@
  * \author Russell Bryant <russell@digium.com>
  *
  * \brief Definitions to aid in the use of thread local storage
-*/
+ *
+ * The POSIX threads (pthreads) API provides the ability to define thread
+ * specific data.  The functions and structures defined here are intended
+ * to centralize the code that is commonly used when using thread local
+ * storage.
+ *
+ * The motivation for using this code in Asterisk is for situations where
+ * storing data on a thread-specific basis can provide some amount of
+ * performance benefit.  For example, there are some call types in Asterisk
+ * where ast_frame structures must be allocated very rapidly (easily 50, 100,
+ * 200 times a second).  Instead of doing the equivalent of that many calls
+ * to malloc() and free() per second, thread local storage is used to keep a
+ * list of unused frame structures so that they can be continuously reused.
+ */
 
 #ifndef ASTERISK_THREADSTORAGE_H
 #define ASTERISK_THREADSTORAGE_H
diff --git a/include/asterisk/utils.h b/include/asterisk/utils.h
index 30e9523e2..3fb817980 100644
--- a/include/asterisk/utils.h
+++ b/include/asterisk/utils.h
@@ -218,6 +218,16 @@ static force_inline void ast_slinear_saturated_divide(short *input, short *value
 
 int test_for_thread_safety(void);
 
+/*!
+ * \brief thread-safe replacement for inet_ntoa().
+ *
+ * \note It is very important to note that even though this is a thread-safe
+ *       replacement for inet_ntoa(), it is *not* reentrant.  In a single
+ *       thread, the result from a previous call to this function is no longer
+ *       valid once it is called again.  If the result from multiple calls to
+ *       this function need to be kept or used at once, then the result must be
+ *       copied to a local buffer before calling this function again.
+ */
 const char *ast_inet_ntoa(struct in_addr ia);
 
 #ifdef inet_ntoa