[whatwg] Application defined "locks"

[Aaron Boodman]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Aaron Boodman<aa at google.com> wrote:
> I see.
>
> So you are suggesting the localStorage could have zero concurrency
> guarantees and it is simply up to the developer to arrange things
> themselves using this new primitive.
>
> That is an interesting idea. You're right that it overlaps with the
> ideas that inspired shared workers, and the global script proposal.

Ok, after thinking about this for a day, I'm going to say I think this
is a very cool idea, and a worthwhile addition, but I don't think it
should substitute for having the local storage API work correctly by
default.

The web platform is supposed to work for developers of all experience
levels. If we make local storage have no concurrency guarantees, it
will seem like it works in the overwhelming majority of cases. It will
work in all SELUAs, and it will only NOT work in MELUAs in cases that
are basically impossible to test, let alone see during development.

We have tried hard with the design of the web platform to avoid these
sort of untestable non-deterministic scenarios, and I think it is to
the overall value of the platform to continue this.

Therefore, my position continues to be that to access local storage,
there should be an API that asynchronously acquires exclusive access
to storage.

- a