[cpp-threads] Somewhat relevant technical report

[Nick Maclaren]

Hans Boehm <Hans.Boehm at hp.com> wrote:
>         
> We haven't so far thought very much about some of Nick's major concerns,
> e.g. which functions can be used to synchronize between threads, possibly
> transitively through other processes.  I would prefer to address these
> issues only for C++ library functions, but to provide a clean and
> extensible framework that can be used for extending the spec to other APIs
> such as Posix or win32 or higher level libraries.

I agree that this is the right strategy.  In fact, I would include the
framework as part of the basic model (but have it purely generic, so
it made no reference to any specific functions), and add the C++ library
functions as a second step.  With iterative refinement where necessary,
of course.

I don't think that the second step would be hard, once the concepts
are clear, but would need careful thought and wording.

And, if it were done right, extending it to POSIX would be simple,
though it would define an extension of POSIX and not anything based
on the current specification.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1 at cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679