coThreads is a concurrent programming library for OCaml. It enhances the Threads library of the standard OCaml distribution in two dimensions:
coThreads implements the same API of the standard Threads library on different execution engines (process, netwoker(todo)), so that a single copy of source code can be compiled and deployed to different environments without modification
coThreads is also a super set of the standard Threads library, with extra components (STM etc.), functions (spawn etc.) and features (object-level compatibility etc.)
The process engine can give you real speedup on multi-core and multi-processor machines, the networker engine (todo) will give you both speedup and scalability.
Combining the original components from the Threads library and the newly added ones, coThreads is a full-fledged toolbox covering two main concurrent programming paradigms, namely shared-memory and message passing, with both high-level and low-level constructors.
All constructors (e.g. thread, mutex, condition, event, channel, tvar, stm etc.) are first class values that can be communicated and shared between independent threads.
Full compatibility with the original Threads library (systhreads and vmthreads), so that you can now deploy your legacy code to new environment for free — without modifying source code, without learning something new.
Both source-level and object-level compatibility among different execution engines, so that you can keep a single copy of source code as well as a single copy of objects files.
The full library is implemented in user-space, no modification to the OCaml compiler and runtime, so that you can use it as a set of plain modules.
Switching engines is as easy as changing the include paths of compilation, and it's quite easy to automate the building process over a set of engines (e.g. with lines of pattern rules in your Makefile)