[kepler-dev] concurrency libraries for jdk 1.4

[Kevin Ruland]

Hi all.

Yesterday I suggested we try to utilize a concurrency library within
Kepler.  This will help us reduce the volume of thread critical code
which we need to write and hopefully provide us with more threading
primitives than provided by the jdk itself (which is almost none). 
There are two libraries which I've dug up which could satisfy this need.

Doug Lea's util.concurrent package
http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/classes/EDU/oswego/cs/dl/util/concurrent/intro.html
.  This is the basis of the concurrency library introduced in Java 5. 
He notes that this package has been reduced to maintenance fixes only
because it has been superceded by Java 5.  He also refers us to the
second package...

Backport of Java 5 concurrency library to Java 1.4.
http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/classes/EDU/oswego/cs/dl/util/concurrent/intro.html
This library does appear to have some offical sanctions by the JSR 166
Expert Group (the jsr which introduced java.util.concurrent  into java
5) which is a good sign.  It should also ease a transition to true java
5 at some time in the future.

Kevin