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Can someone help me to understand why boost::thread::mutex is noncopyable? I expect that there is a good reason, but I can't see it at the moment.

http://www.boost.org/doc/html/threads/faq.html#id2786688

I'm being a bit dense - a subsequent FAQ shows how you can write a copy-constructor for a struct that contains a mutex that explicitly copies the data, giving you a new default-constructed mutex. The constructor can even lock the thing it is copying. --Phil.