On Mar 25, 2007, at 12:03 AM, Emil Dotchevski wrote:
On Windows, you can have two joins on the same thread. Copyable thread handles can support this behavior directly. How does one achieve the same thing with N2184::thread semantics?
You put a N2184::thread on the heap, with a condition variable, mutex and reference count accompanying it. You then create a copyable handle to this struct which manages the lifetime with the reference count, and access to the thread (and other state such as whether the thread as ended or not). It might look a lot like: http://braddock.com/~braddock/future/ which is currently being discussed in the boost thread titled "[futures] untyped_promise or future<void>". As I understand it, this copyable, mutli-join handle is currently implemented on top of (or perhaps "usable with" is a more accurate statement than "implemented on to of") the non-copyable boost::thread. I do not propose that everyone who needs this functionality go out and write their own future. Instead I propose that std::future (actually I like the name std::shared_future) be standardized *in addition to* the N2184::thread. The LWG has looked at futures and is currently thinking that TR2 would be a more appropriate target for this functionality. -Howard