On Jul 27, 2004, at 10:45 AM, Christopher Currie wrote:
Howard Hinnant wrote:
Ok, new spec up at: http://home.twcny.rr.com/hinnant/cpp_extensions/threads.html
So, I understand that the prevaling opinion is that we should drop try_lock and timed_lock in favor of one all-encompasing scoped lock. Are we going to eliminate variations of Mutex as well, or will mutex/try_mutex/timed_mutex still exist?
The mutex end is still under debate. It's a good deal with locks because you can just not use (instantiate) the try_lock and timed_lock stuff if you don't want it, or if the mutex you're using doesn't support it. No harm is done. This is because the lock just contains a mutex reference and a bool, no matter what the capabilities. But it isn't that simple for the mutex. There's a tradeoff to be made. The more capability you stuff into a mutex, the more bloated it becomes. But even that statement is platform dependent. Some platforms already supply a native mutex with all the capability stuffed in, so there is no further penalty in supplying an all-in-one boost::mutex on such a platform. I think at some point we realized that we could make progress on the locks without tackling the very question you ask. -Howard