Re: [boost] This deadlocks on Linux but not on Windows

From: Anthony Williams (anthony_w.geo_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-02-08 14:50:46

Clark Sims <clark_sims_boost <at> yahoo.com> writes:

> 
> I would like it to deadlock on windows, because I just wrote a large header
file, which assumes that a
> deadlock will occur.  In fact, I don't know how I am going to program mutex's
and locks,  if they act like
> recursive locks on windows, but scoped locks on linux.

The new boost 1.35 implementation of mutexes on Windows are not recursive, and
will also deadlock on this code. However, as others have said, there is no
sensible use for code that deadlocks --- once you have a deadlock, your code is
dead.

It is an implementation detail how the thread library behaves when you are
trying to lock a non-recursive mutex recursively. It is within the scope of
POSIX threads for an attempt to lock a mutex like this to return an error code
rather than deadlock, which will trigger the BOOST_ASSERT in the mutex
implementation.

Anthony