> From: Alexander Terekhov [mailto:terekhov@web.de]
> Sent: 06 August 2002 22:44
> > Anthony Williams wrote:
> [...]
> > On POSIX, you can statically initialize a mutex, as mutexes are POD.
> >
> > On Windows, mutexes are always dynamically initialized. However, you
> > can ensure they are only initialized once by using named mutexes.
>
> Yeah, but somehow it's still possible to use POSIX mutexes [static
> including] even on Windows. ;-)

I know --- I use pthreads-win32 at work. However, I wouldn't want to impose the requirement that every user of Boost Threads also install pthreads-win32.

OTOH, it might be worth checking out their implementation of statically initialized mutexes, since they use Win32 Semaphores and Critical Sections rather than Win32 Mutexes.

However, I'm not sure we want POSIX semantics --- it poses an unnecessary burden on the users to have to specify a static initializer or call a dynamic init function, it is much preferable to just have Mutex() do the Right Thing in all cases.

Anthony