Re: [boost] there already is an ASIO.

From: Christopher Kohlhoff (chris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-27 09:05:11

Hi Olaf,

--- Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> True, but sync operations are already quite easy to do easily and
> 'portably' via BSD sockets.

Hmmm, for very simple use cases maybe. But consider...

- Does the socket API need to be initialised (WSAStartup etc)?

- What is the best way to handle SIGPIPE if you write to a
  disconnected socket?

- Thread-safety (or otherwise) of host resolution functions like
  getaddrinfo.

- Whether IPv6 capable functions are available (they're not on
  Windows 2000).

- Functions for scatter-gather operations (recvmsg/sendmsg and
  WSASend/WSARecv) have quite different signatures.

- Whether socket option values are passed as void* or char*.

etc, etc.

In my experience, if you want your code to be portable it will
quickly acquire #ifdefs to cope with these differences. And
that's assuming you discover the differences at all - what's the
bet that there are people who port socket code to Mac OS X who
aren't aware that getaddrinfo isn't thread safe.

Cheers,
Chris