Re: [boost] Re: Threads Rewrite?

From: Mac Murrett (mmurrett_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-20 03:27:30

I'm signed up to the list again!  Thanks to Bill and Marshall for the 
friendly nudges.

On Jul 19, 2004, at 9:18 PM, Miro Jurisic wrote:

> MPTasks are layered on top of pthreads, so it should be fine to 
> replace an
> MPTasks implementation of boost::threads with a pthreads one without 
> hurting
> anyone, except for clients of boost::threads that depend on the 
> implementation
> using MPTasks -- but I don't think that assumption is supported.

The MP task implementation is really only interesting for Carbon and 
Mac OS 9-only targets; the pthreads implementation is more efficient 
and probably safer under Mac OS X/Mach-O.

> By the way, does the boost::threads API assume that preemptive 
> scheduling, or
> would it be possible to use boost::threads as an abstraction over 
> cooperative
> threads?

It was always Bill's thought that the API was portable to cooperative 
threads, but I do not believe that this was ever implemented or tested. 
  Certainly many threaded solutions will not work without preemption, 
regardless of the thread library they are built against.

M.