On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:21 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:

> > A runtime system is just a library whose entry points are language
> > keywords.[1]  In go, dynamic allocation, threads, channels, etc. are
> > accessed via language features, so the libraries that implement those
> > things are considered part of the RTS.  That's a terminological
> > difference only from Plan 9 C, which has the same features[2] but
> > accesses them through ordinary library entry points so the libraries
> > that implement them aren't called `runtimes'.  But I think complaining
> > about a library only because its entry point is a keyword is kind of
> > silly.
>
> i think this glosses over a key difference.  a runtime can do things
> that are not invoked by function call.  the canonical example is
> garbage collection.
>
> - erik
>
> An excellent example would also be the scheduling of goroutines.   I do not
believe there's anything in the language specification that says that
goroutines could not one day be pre-emptive.

Also, from this point of view, could pthreads be considered runtime for C?
 Depends on the implementation I suppose.  You've got thread local storage,
which is not handled by any explicit C code, but by a coordinated effort
between the kernel and the pthreads library.  So the kernel is a C runtime
too :-).

Dave