1.8.6 thread support was broken in bad ways. It stayed for three months 1.8.6-p36 is broken w.r.t. compilation of extensions and has a thread bug. The bug is much minor than in 1.8.6, but it is nonetheless a bug in a very "core" part of the standard library. Wouldn't it be possible to have "hotfixes" (i.e.: quick patchlevel releases) when this kind of bugs happen ? Sylvain