[gpderetta]

They are so good that they keep being reinvented even in userspace, for example WTF::ParkingLot.

Or C++ also adding std::atomic::wait which is basically a thin [1] wrapper over futex.

[1] implementations still manage to mess it up.

[senderista]

The WTF::ParkingLot example is interesting because it shows that you don't actually need futexes in the kernel to implement them efficiently; you just need something like a spinlock (with sane backoff!) to guard the userspace wait queue and a per-thread eventfd to wake up waiters.

[gpderetta]

Yes, you can do a good futex impression in userspace and add any missing functionality you need. Most importantly for webkit, I think, you get portability.

The advantage of futex provided by the kernel is ABI stability and cross process support.

[saagarjha]

It gives you an implementation. The implementation does not have to be ideal, though.