mutex_traits<>

From: bill_kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-30 16:33:37

OK, we've discovered the need to move some things I'd considered 
implementation details into some form of public interface.  My 
thinking is to define some traits classes that allow these details to 
be specified.  The first "draft" of a mutex_traits<> type looks like 
this:

template <typename Mutex>
class mutex_traits
{
public:
    typedef <i>Implementation Defined</i> cv_state;
    static void lock(Mutex& mutex);
    static void trylock(Mutex& mutex);
    static void timedlock(Mutex& mutex);
    static void unlock(Mutex& mutex);
    static void lock(Mutex& mutex, cv_state& state);
    static void unlock(Mutex& mutex, const cv_state& state);
};

From a design standpoint, is it OK to use this with types such as 
boost::mutex which don't support all the methods, or do we need 
seperate traits classes for try and timed mutex variants?  The 
compiler will catch misuses when using a single traits template, but 
I'm still not sure that it's "proper" to design this with a single 
traits type.

The other issue is that the above definition won't map to a 
read_write_mutex which doesn't have a lock() operation but instead 
has a read_lock() and a write_lock() operation.  I'm not sure how to 
deal with this, or if I actually should deal with it.

Comments/ideas?

Bill Kempf