[swift-evolution] Introducing synthesized locks

[Karl Wagner]

> On 12. Jun 2017, at 11:10, Erik Aigner via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> In my day to day tasks, synchronization primitives are used quite often. ObjC had the @synchronized attribute for methods. I didn’t find anything about this in swift evolution, so I thought i bring it up here. I think it would quite easily be possible to introduce a synchronized qualifier for struct/class objects that automatically synthesize a semaphore variable on the object and use it to lock said method. Here is an example of how that would work
> 
> Without the synchronized attribute (code written in mail, not compiled):
> 
> class Obj {
> 
> 	 private let sema = DispatchSemaphore(value: 1)
> 
> 	func synchronizedMethod() {
> 		sema.wait()
> 		defer {
> 			sema.signal()
> 		}
> 		// do something...
> 	}
> }
> 
> With synchronized attribute (the semaphore/wait/deferred-signal is synthesized by Swift automatically)
> 
> class Obj {
> 
> 	synchronized func method() {
> 		// semaphore is synthesized automatically, do something…
> 	}
> }
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Erik
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Swift does not currently have any special support for concurrency. That will undoubtedly come in some future version of Swift, and atomic operations and data are pretty common use-cases which I’m sure the community will want covered.

- Karl