Re: [boost] mutex feature diagram

From: Milutin Jovanovic (miki_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-08-26 08:40:53

Hi all,

I have been pondering about portability of whatever multithreading support we
will come up with. In particular, the mutex feature diagram. The point I am
worried about is the amount of optional features that are present in the
diagram. My basic question, what is the purpose of us creating a reliable
library if the user cannot rely on a particular function being provided.
However, there is an argument against as well. Yes, some people might need a
more specialised functions. So we should probably not eliminate them
alltogether.

My point is, we should first concentrate on a minimalist diagram, set of
features that every platform must support. This diagram should provide basic
support that is enough to allow portable multi threaded code to be written.
Only then shold we look into how to expand this set.

The reason for this is that I would infinitely prefer to have a well defined
set of features that are guaranteed to be available everywhere, and design and
code around them, completely ignoring optional features. Yes I realise this
would be a severely limited set, but it should still be sufficient for vast
majority of MT problems.

Miki Jovanovic.