Re: [boost] Boost.threads: Setting stack size

From: William E. Kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-06-10 08:35:39

----- Original Message -----
From: <Schalk_Cronje_at_[hidden]>

> One thing that might be useful for the next version of Boost.threads is
> setting additional attributes when creating a new thread.

Planned.

> One example is to set the stack size in order to reduce the memory
footprint
> of processes spawning many threads. Originally I thought that this might
be
> passed as an optional parameter to the c-tor, unfortunately it seems that
> the stack size is not portable. [Under pthreads it's a case of setting the
> attributes via pthreads_attr_setstacksize before calling pthread_create,
but
> this limits the maximum stack size. Under winthreads it seems that one can
> only set the initial stack size, bit there is no explicit top limit].

It's actually more complicated then that.  You can't necessarily set a stack
size under pthreads.  On some platforms you can instead set a pointer to a
"stack" you've allocated yourself.  Theoretically, at least, there may also
be some platforms in which neither thread attribute is available.

> What might be a good idea is to pass an optional third parameter into the
> c-tor which is a wrapper for an implementation-specific set of attributes.
>
> typedef IMPLEMENTATION thread_attr;
>
> class thread
> {
> public:
>
>   thread(const functiono<void>& threadfunc, thread_attr* p=0);
> };

This is basically what's planned.  This will also be the solution used for
mutex attributes as well.

Bill Kempf