Build fails under alpine Linux (w/musl libc)

[rhowe-gds]

Observed when building appmetrics under alpine 3.10.1: RuntimeTools/appmetrics#454 (comment)

../omr-agentcore/src/ibmras/common/port/linux/Thread.cpp: In function 'void ibmras::common::port::stopAllThreads()':
../omr-agentcore/src/ibmras/common/port/linux/Thread.cpp:144:8: error: 'pthread_getname_np' was not declared in this scope
   rc = pthread_getname_np(top, theName, 16);
        ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Introduced by commit 7b11cfe, but pthread_getname_np is not available in musl libc (only setname)

Reproducible by adding this Dockerfile

FROM alpine:3.10.1

RUN ["apk", "add", "--no-cache", "make", "g++"]

ADD . /omr-agentcore

ENV BUILD=xa64

WORKDIR /omr-agentcore

RUN ["make"]

and running docker build .

[robolivable]

Quite a coincidence! I've been working on getting this exact issue resolved in the past couple of days. My temporary work around just for getting a POC up is actually going ahead and implementing the pthread_getname_np method in musl. Building these as separate binaries from source, and pointing the binding.gyp file to the includes/libs does the trick for now...

I wonder about the need for this method in the first place... maybe there's an alternative for the commit that introduced its use?

[rhowe-gds]

I think it's only used for monitoring the JVM and therefore isn't needed at all for appmetrics. I can't see how else you could identify a particular thread although maybe the way to do it is to keep a reference to all the threads we create and use that list when stopping them?

[frostmar]

I've run into this problem when trying to use the appmetrics nodejs package in an Alpine Linux docker image.
npm install appmetrics fails with the C compiler error above.

FWIW, it seems like msul is considering supporting pthread_getname_np
A search turns up this on the msul developer mailing list archive from July 2019:
https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2019/07/17/3

On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 12:20:09AM -0400, Robert Oliveira wrote:
I'm simply curious about the absence of a pthread getter method
(phtread_getname_np) in musl, since it seems the setter method
(pthread_setname_np) has been around for a while. This only came up because
of a reference to this method in a NodeJS library that uses some cpp
bindings (when using an Alpine image for running Node).

Here's a relevant Github link regarding the matter, for what it's worth:
#90

Thanks in advance for your time.

It's come up before, and there were reasons for not doing it, but not
terribly compelling ones. I promised to look at it again this release
cycle and I suspect that'll end with it getting added.
Rich

[mattcolegate]

OK everyone, been a while coming but I've sorted out our problems with Alpine and you're good to go on this.
Omr agentcore 4.0.5, Appmetrics 5.0.5, also available on npm.
I tested using this Dockerfile:

FROM node:alpine

RUN ["apk", "add", "--no-cache", "make", "g++", "python", "git"]

RUN ["npm", "install", "appmetrics"]

WORKDIR node_modules/appmetrics

RUN ["npm", "install"]

RUN ["npm", "test"]

Open new issues if you have any :-)