RE: boost.threads: on_thread_exit

From: William Kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-09-06 16:31:53

From: "Peter Dimov" <pdimov_at_[hidden]>
>The on_thread_exit service exposed by threadmon.dll is very useful on its
>own (for win32 developers.) Perhaps it deserves to be documented?

It's an implementation detail and should not be used directly.  What I have 
considered was adding a boost::thread::atexit() method.  I'm reluctant to 
add to the interface during this review, but if it's considered important 
enough I'll do this.

>I suggest the following improvement: change
>
>void on_thread_exit(void (*) ());
>
>to
>
>void on_thread_exit(void (*) (void *), void *);
>
>(rationale: when on_thread_exit is called to register a function for the
>main thread, by the time the function is invoked, all thread-specific
>variables are already gone.)

I don't follow this.  The thread_specific_ptr<> already handles cleanup of 
thread-specific data and so boost::thread::atexit() would not be needed for 
cleanup of this type.  Passing a pointer to thread-specific data to atexit() 
is going to result in an error since the data will have already been 
reclaimed.  I personally think that boost::thread::atexit() should use the 
same syntax as std::atexit().  That's why I coded on_thread_exit() that way.

Bill Kempf

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