Shared memory between Visual Studio build and MinGW build

From: Da Xu (djsignal7_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-02-29 23:52:43

Hi folks,
got a strange one here.
I am trying to get two programs to communicate with each other on Windows 10 via shared memory. Both of them are using Boost 1.72, compiled from the same set of headers.  I am only using the shared memory portion of boost.
However, one is compiled with Visual studio 2019 community, and the other one is compiled with MinGW 64, g++ version 9.2.0. I have to use MinGW, because I am writing a plugin for another program, which only takes dlls compiled with MinGW.
The program compiled with MinGW creates the shared memory and allocates several objects. Then I started the second program that was compiled with Visual Studio 2019. It was able to find and connect to the managed segment. When I am viewing the segment info from Visual Studio's debugger, everything looks ok. However, when I call get_free_memory(). It spits back 18446744073709551104, which is just bizarre.
Then, when I tried to find_or_construct on the managed segment. It just hangs, apparently stuck in winapi::sleep_tick()Â  with the following tracedll!boost::interprocess::winapi::sleep_tick() Line 1288 C++dll!boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::thread_sleep_tick() Line 187 C++dll!boost::interprocess::spin_wait::yield() Line 128 C++dll!boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::try_based_lock<boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::spin_mutex>(boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::spin_mutex & m) Line 71 C++dll!boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::spin_mutex::lock() Line 81 C++dll!boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::spin_recursive_mutex::lock() Line 95 C++dll!boost::interprocess::interprocess_recursive_mutex::lock() Line 165 C++dll!boost::interprocess::scoped_lock<boost::interprocess::interprocess_recursive_mutex>::scoped_lock<boost::interprocess::interprocess_recursive_mutex>(boost::interprocess::interprocess_recursive_mutex & m) Line 81 C++dll!boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>::priv_generic_named_construct<char>(unsigned char type, const char * name, unsigned __int64 num, bool try2find, bool dothrow, boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::in_place_interface & table, boost::interprocess::iset_index<boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::index_config<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>>> & index, boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::bool_<1> is_intrusive) Line 1076 C++dll!boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>::priv_generic_construct(const char * name, unsigned __int64 num, bool try2find, bool dothrow, boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::in_place_interface & table) Line 760 C++dll!boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>::generic_construct<SharedMem_Info>(const char * name, unsigned __int64 num, bool try2find, bool dothrow, boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::in_place_interface & table) Line 705 C++dll!boost::interprocess::ipcdetail::named_proxy<boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>,SharedMem_Info,0>::operator()<char const (&)[17],int,int,int,int,bool,boost::interprocess::allocator<void,boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>> &>(const char[17] & <args_0>, int && <args_1>, int && <args_2>, int && <args_3>, int && <args_4>, bool && <args_5>, boost::interprocess::allocator<void,boost::interprocess::segment_manager<char,boost::interprocess::rbtree_best_fit<boost::interprocess::mutex_family,boost::interprocess::offset_ptr<void,__int64,unsigned __int64,0>,0>,boost::interprocess::iset_index>> & <args_6>) Line 131 C++

It looks like it the segment manager was unable to get a mutex lock on the memory? But I don't believe I put a mutex lock on the segment manager from the other end.  
Everything works just fine if I am doing shared memory between two programs compiled with visual studio. 
So, it feels like somewhere some how memory alignment is off? 
Anybody ran into a similar issue before?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!!