Re: [boost] [threading] rewrite

From: Roland Schwarz (roland.schwarz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-03 04:09:39

Anthony Williams wrote:
> I'm happy to be listed as platform maintainer for Windows.

Fine! Since you are already signed up for this there is no need to 
change much. Thanks, Anthony.
I also hope that I can count on you helping fixing bugs for the the 
upcoming 1-34 release.

> If no-one else takes
> on POSIX, I could do that too, (though I thought we did have a volunteer), but
> I know nothing about MacOS, and don't have access to a Mac.

Since I am about to switch over to linux based systems, I would be 
interested to take over this part, while waiting for Matt Hurd who AFAIR 
intended to focus on this.

Since pthreads is available on a lot of platforms (win32 too) I intend 
to extend the support for pthreads implementation, i.e the library user 
should be able to choose between pthreads versus native implementation 
where available. Also this approach will make it possible to get 
boost_threads ported to a new platform fast, while still give the option 
to do a native implementation later. Having pthreads implementation 
available on most platforms also will give a reference implementation to 
check for correctness and the like.

I contacted Mac Murret (the contributor of the mac implementation) 
offlist. He told me that it is not meaningful to support MP on mac 
anymore since while still available it is an emulation layer on top of 
pthreads which in turn is on top of the native interface. Supporting 
pthreads he thinks is sufficient while possibly optimize for Mac Threads 
might be meaningful in some specific areas. He will be available if we 
need someone to do a test compile once we have pthreads in place.

> It's good to have someone take overall responsibility. Thanks, Roland.

Hopefully I will be able to meet your expectations.

Roland