Re: [boost] Re: Boost.Threads draft library submission

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-03-15 13:09:28

At 12:12 PM 3/15/2001, Dan Nuffer wrote:

 >...  Now if the Xerces
 >library had written those two functions in the header files, they
 >would've been inlined and the app would've gained at least 15% speed
 >improvement.  The extra layers effectively doubled the time spent
 >locking/unlocking mutexes.
 >I can understand your not wanting to include windows.h in the header
 >file, but I think you're overstating the negative impact.  If you're
 >writing a program to run on windows, odds are you've already included
 >windows.h and then there's pre-compiled headers with MSVC.  For pthreads
 >platforms, including pthreads.h is trivial.
 >Maybe you could take the approach of using a .ipp file, where if the
 >user wants a minimal header they just include the .hpp, but if they want
 >speed, to have things inlined they include the .hpp and the .ipp.  Thus
 >the user has the option to choose.

There may come a time when 15% difference is a big number.  But right now 
we need to focus first on the interface issues and functionality.  Is this 
an  interface we feel comfortable with?  Ditto functionality.  Have known 
safety issues been addressed? Then there are issues of correct 
implementation.

Eventually, after all those hurdles are passed, we can bother the 
developers about 15% performance gains.  But for now let's try to keep 
focused on the larger questions.

Just my opinion, of course, and not meant to be critical of Dan's comments.

--Beman