[Boost-users] Boost.Thread win32 mutex implementations

Subject: [Boost-users] Boost.Thread win32 mutex implementations
From: Collin Dauphinee (collin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-09-06 17:49:49

I was just looking at the win32 implementations of the various Boost.Thread
mutex classes (specifically basic_recursive_mutex). I was surprised to see
that they use WaitForSingleObject internally, rather than a
CRITICAL_SECTION.
I've found mentions that it originally used a CRITICAL_SECTION, but no
explanation of why it was changed.
It seems to me, personally, that the hybrid locking functionality of the
CRITICAL_SECTION implementation would be more desirable than the
WaitForSingleObject implementation in most use cases.

Is there a reason for this choice? At first glance, it looks like it was
just done to re-use code from the timed_mutex, which can't (easily) be
implemented with CRITICAL_SECTION.

Regards,
Collin