[boost] Re: [threads] Future directions (Was: TR2 and C++0x heads up)

From: Paul Baxter (pauljbaxter_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-24 08:24:27

< lots of good suggestions snipped >

I agree that threading needs to find its way into the standard and hope 
enough progress is made soon to make this a reality. I hope many aspects 
from the shmem library and others are considered to enrich the basic 
functions currently offered by boost threads. This would improve the utility 
of a 'threads' submission in my opinion.

I also think that thread priority and scheduling need to be implemented in 
some form. I appreciate that in certain OSes this isn't possible, but if 
such priorities/scheduling types were hints which an implementation were 
free to ignore then why couldn't these feature as say optional constructor 
parameters or in a member function for adjusting priority/scheduling type.

I couldn't find the mailing list discussion (that I expect did happen) 
regarding the reasons not to include priority etc.in the interface, but 
would be interested if their inclusion may be possible in future revisions 
of boost thread.

I also find the notion of creating a new thread and monitoring an existing 
thread being represented within the same class (with different constructors) 
as being slightly non-intuitive. This may be one of many areas where boost 
threads could benefit from a more tutorial-based set of documents rather 
than a purist model/concept set of docs.

Paul