Re: [boost] [thread] Dividing into Boost.Thread and Boost.Sync

Subject: Re: [boost] [thread] Dividing into Boost.Thread and Boost.Sync
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-08-17 14:39:28

On Saturday 17 August 2013 17:58:52 Oliver Kowalke wrote:
> 2013/8/17 Andrey Semashev <andrey.semashev_at_[hidden]>
> 
> > We don't plan to extract futures and related stuff, it's too coupled with
> > Boost.Thread. The main goal of Boost.Sync is to provide lightweight
> > building
> > blocks for low level thread synchronization and futures are beyond that.
> 
> futures usually depend only on mutex and condition_variable - at least it
> is possible to implement it this way.
> I would vote to decouple boost.future from boost.thread (so it could be
> used from other execution primitives than threads).

You can use future and promise to pass asynchronous values, true. But still, 
its primary use is with threads. Things like async() and future.then() use 
threads to carry out actions. Even if you don't use these features, you can 
still use futures from Boost.Thread.

Note that I'm not saying there's no point in loosening this dependency of 
futures on threads. I'm saying that Boost.Sync doesn't look like a proper 
place for futures.