Re: [boost] Not keen on Boost.Threads? [was: name of the "thread" type]

From: Ross Smith (ross.s_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-23 08:23:02

Beman Dawes wrote:
> 
> Ross Smith wrote:
> 
>  >(Then again, possibly I'm not the best guy to be putting his oar in at
>  >the moment; I'm not very keen on what I've seen of the Boost threads
>  >library so far, so clearly your aims are different to mine.)
> 
> Could you explain why you aren't "very keen"?
> 
> Because the library isn't cast in concrete yet, knowing what people dislike
> about it would be helpful.
> 
> If it is a matter of philosophy or aims rather that design details, that is
> important and helpful.  We need to understand other views.

Well, judging from the current partial implementation, it's partly that
it seems a bit too heavyweight -- something of a "kitchen sink"
approach, trying to put every conceivable need into the API. I'd prefer
something a bit more spartan.

It also seems to be following the pthreads architecture too closely for
my taste. It doesn't really "feel" like a designed-from-scratch C++
library to me -- more like a thin OO wrapper around the pthreads API,
and an attempt to emulate it on Windows. (I'm thinking in particular of
condition variables, a pthread-specific concept that I don't think
belongs in a generic threading library.)

(When I have a bit more spare time, I'll polish up my own thread library
and post it somewhere for comparison.)

-- 
Ross Smith <ross.s_at_[hidden]> The Internet Group, Auckland, New Zealand
========================================================================
"Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating
system wars, like the Russian Army."                  -- Neal Stephenson