Re: [boost] Boost.Threads, N2178, N2184, et al

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-23 11:22:10

Yuval Ronen wrote:
> Peter Dimov wrote:
>> Anthony Williams wrote:
>>
>>> However, Microsoft do not supply such an interface, so someone has
>>> to write one. Writing one might be a good idea, but using it to
>>> implement the C++ API, when the C++ API could be better written
>>> using the win32 API directly seems a bad plan to me, especially if
>>> you could use your C++ API to implement pthreads.
>>
>> It depends on what your plan is supposed to achieve. If you want to
>> gradually transition from where we are now to a point where
>> Microsoft does supply a pthread layer, it's not a bad plan at all.
>> If you want something else, it might or might not be, depending on
>> what exactly do you want. Anyway, I see that you are taking this as
>> an argument, so I'll leave you to your opinion.
>
> Excuse me for being a bit daft here, but why is our plan to make
> Microsoft supply a Windows pthread layer? The reason we all want that
> today, is because there *is no* C/C++ threading standard. Once there
> is such a standard, we wouldn't care anymore about the underlying OS API.
> That's the whole purpose of this (or any) standardization effort, isn't 
> it?

That was the exact purpose of the pthreads standard. Now people on 
POSIX-compliant OSes don't care about the underlying OS APIs (which in 
general have little to do with pthreads) because the vendor ships a pthread 
layer.

Add to that the fact that all threading proposals to date agree that the 
pthreads threading abstraction is the way to go; they all mandate its set of 
primitives and semantics. So we do want Microsoft to offer the pthread 
threading model to C++ programmers, even if some of us don't realize it.

The obvious question now is: do we want Microsoft to offer this threading 
model only to C++ programmers and not to C programmers? And what do we stand 
to gain from that? How is it in the best interest of the C++ community to 
demand that C code remains nonportable?