Re: [boost] surveying async network io libraries

From: Christopher Kohlhoff (chris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-12 20:59:05

Hi Caleb,

--- Caleb Epstein <caleb.epstein_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Just to clarify one point: asio is portable.  It runs on Windows
> (using I/O completion ports), Linux (via epoll or select), Solaris
> and
> *should* work on any other UNIX-like platform that supports
> select(2).
>  I had to make a couple of very simple changes to get it to compile
> on
> OS/X (the gethostby*_r functions don't seem to be available on this
> platform).

In fact I have a patch for OS/X which should be in asio 0.3.3. However
I believe the functions it uses are not guaranteed to be thread-safe
until 10.4, so you would only be able to use asio in a single-threaded
program for earlier OS/X releases.

Basically the approach I have been taking has been to make asio
portable first (via select) and then to optimise for each platform. For
example, it theoretically supports implementations that use /dev/poll
on Solaris and kqueues on on *bsd (including OS/X AFAIK).

Cheers,
Chris