CHESS and .NET 4.0/Parallel Extensions

Question

Hi,

just wonder if you have any plans for CHESS regarding .Net 4.0/Parallel Extensions? 

Thanks
Daniel

Answer 1

Hi Daniel,

We've been very busy with the test team for Parallel Extensions - they actively use CHESS to test the Parallel Extensions. We have not yet developed CHESS wrappers for the Parallel Extensions classes themselves. Of course, many of the new classes are implemented directly on top of System.Threading, which CHESS does support, so by extension CHESS can analyze these classes. But it's not the most efficient way to go. We have done some prototyping of wrappers for some of the new classes, but we have no plan yet for covering all the new classes. We would definitely be interested in hearing from the community on this. Best,

-- Tom

Answer 2

Hi Tom,

I've been a C# developer for quite a few years now and I just can't wait for CHESS to support .NET 4.0 threading model.
I know that .NET 4.0 is not yet released officially but once it is, you'll get much more requests for supporting its new threading model.

There is one main reason, really - this new model is way better than the one we had in the past.
I personally use it all the time as it is so simple and effective compared to the old model.

If you want to stay ahead in the thread-safety testing game than supporting .NET 4.0 and VS 2010 in CHESS is the way to go.
The sooner the better :)

CHESS is amazing.

Keep up the good work,
KubuS

Answer 3

KubuS,

Thanks for the feedback encouraging CHESS support for .NET 4.0. In fact, we now have developed CHESS wrappers for the
Task Parallel Library, in concert with the PCP team, and are in the process of testing them out. We'll be trying to get a new
CHESS release out soon. In the meantime, please tell more about your use of CHESS at:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/chess/thread/6a38ceca-e96b-42d3-97f6-65d1e1b3675e

In general, I'd like to remind forum posters that DevLabs is a place for evaluation of promising technologies and we need
to hear from you about both problems you have with CHESS, as well as cases where you actually found it useful!  This will
help us make a case for longer term support of CHESS. Best,

-- Tom