This class presents a collection of static methods that allow access to some native methods. It makes use of native methods to access those thread properties.
Since the methods in this class require the presence of a shared library with the name defined in SHLIB_NAME it is necessary to load it prior to making use of any such methods. All methods that require the shared library will automatically load the library if that has not been already done. The library might also be manually loaded with the 'loadLibrary()' method of this class.
This class provides only static methods. It should not be instantiated.
Currently the only native services available is settings relative to POSIX threads, which are not accessible from the Java API.
Currently the methods in this class make sense with POSIX threads only, since they access POSIX threads settings. POSIX threads are most used under UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems and are mostly referred to as "native" threads in Java Virtual Machine (JVM) implementations.
The shared library SHLIB_NAME uses functions of the POSIX thread library (i.e. 'pthread'). Calling the methods that use the 'pthread' library will most prbably cause the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to crash if it is not using the POSIX threads, due to unsatisfied references. For instance, JVMs that use "green" threads will most certainly crash. POSIX threads are referred to as "native" threads in JVMs under UNIX operating systems.
On Operating Systems where POSIX threads are not available (typically Windows 95/98/NT/2000, MacIntosh, OS/2) there is no problem since the SHLIB_NAME, if available, will not make use of POSIX threads library functions, thus no problem should occur.