  DECthreads vs PPL? 
 The Question is:
 
I have been given the task of renovating an old c program which would
benefit greatly from being rewritten using threads. Unfortunately, this
would be a major rewrite due to the thread-unsafe code prevalent throughout.
 
It seems to me that the PPL library would solve nearly all my problems
rather neatly; however, I see (in the answer to another one of these
questions) that the PPL has been 'retired'. Pray tell, why? And furthermore,
what exactly does 'retired' mean, i.e.
 is it still available at all, or is 'retired' one small step from
'expired'?
 
Is there a replacement for ppl (other than threads)? I've been given the
time only to 'fix-up' the program, not to redesign it from scratch.
 
Thanks
 
PS: I typed in a small ppl example program and was surprised to discover
that I could not link it. What does one have to do to entice ppl out of
retirement?
 
 
 The Answer is:
 
  DECthreads is effectively the replacement for the Parallel Processing
  Library (PPL).
 
  Retirement was a business decision, due in no small part to the
  overlap between the DECthreads (POSIX threads) and PPL packages, and
  due to the capabilities put in place to permit DECthreads threads to
  be scheduled and to execute in parallel across the CPUs in an OpenVMS
  Alpha symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system.
 
  There is presently little -- or no -- support for any problems that
  might be reported against the PPL library.
 
  PPL source code is available on the OpenVMS Freeware.
 
