Include warnings against using volatile

[The-Futurist]

There seems to be a strong feeling within the C# language community (e.g. gitter discussions) that volatile should no be used, there are other ways of dealing with the problems it was intended to help solve.

The existing documentation does nothing to discourage use of volatile yet it seems most experts think it should be discouraged.

Please add information or guidance or at least some clarification about this and if volatile has been superseded these days by other methods (interlocked API etc) then please explain that.

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Document Details

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• ID: d226514d-c7cb-0d1b-b9dc-fb791399dc47
• Version Independent ID: aa5d1078-7f89-98ce-7fdc-107c9ed3eebc
• Content: volatile - C# Reference
• Content Source: docs/csharp/language-reference/keywords/volatile.md
• Product: dotnet-csharp
• Technology: csharp-language-reference
• GitHub Login: @BillWagner
• Microsoft Alias: wiwagn

[BillWagner]

That's a great suggestion @Korporal

Can you add a permalink to the recent gitter discussions?

I've added this to our backlog to address as we update the language referenced.

[The-Futurist]

@BillWagner - Is this helpful?

https://gitter.im/dotnet/csharplang?at=607b146006e2e024e85cad8c

[BillWagner]

To fix this, the warnings should be more nuanced than "don't use volatile". It was added to the language to be used.

Some synchronization problems need barriers, which volatile provides. Most general forms of synchronization issues are better solved using higher-level forms of synchronization like lock or other lock types provided by the runtime.

In the rare case where low-lock synchronization techniques are required, volatile is the correct choice. Those cases are rare, and the necessary code is complicated and hard to get right. Therefore, we should recommend using higher level lock techniques whenever possible.