Re: [boost] Re: Review: Boost.Threads

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-09-10 09:59:46

At 10:13 AM 9/10/2001, Ed Brey wrote:

 >[Including Windows.h in header]
 >> It's more a problem with macro clashes caused by Windows.h and
 >> portable code.  I'm not likely to budge on this, since inlining makes
 >> little difference in performance here.
 >
 >Understandable.  Just out of curiosity, what kind of applications are
 >out there that are compiled on win32, use threads, and don't alreayd
 >include <windows.h> for something else.

The commercial software I make my living from includes a library plus some 
console mode programs which use the library.  Both programs and library 
must be highly portable, so don't include <windows.h>.  No use of 
multi-threading originally, although a set of programming practices were 
followed which tended to make the code thread-safe.

I've had good luck turning one of the programs into a multi-threaded app 
using a early version of Boost.Threads.  Worked first try on both single 
and multi-processor machines.

It would certainly cause concern if windows.h was included.  That has 
happened inadvertently a few times in the past, and caused (minor) 
problems.  It also means certain failures won't show until porting to other 
platforms, which is viewed as a bad thing.

For this type of very portable software, including windows.h in the public 
Boost.Thread headers would be seen as a bit of a reduction in 
quality-of-implementation.  Not a showstopper, however.

--Beman