Jason Hise wrote: [...]
Please elaborate. I have very little threading background. What exactly is a synchronized static local? Is this a class or object level mutex, or something entirely different?
It is a C++ incarnation of ages-old pthread_once(), so to say. For details, see: http://www.google.de/groups?selm=3EBB8DDC.C81DF4AE%40web.de http://www.google.de/groups?selm=41496597.F54DD01A%40web.de
The "some compilers" part worries me a bit, as I would like this library to be portable.
Yeah.
When you refer to atomic<>, I presume you are referring to operations that are indivisible at the processor level. Are there such operations that can be assumed to be atomic on every processor,
Atomicity is only one aspect. The rest is MT memory model with explicit reordering constraints coupled with atomic<> operations and a few bidirectional fences.
or would I be using a large boost library that defines common atomic operations based on the compiler, processor, and operating system?
Read this thread: http://www.google.de/groups?threadm=41E3B870.CA6DDE9D%40web.de regards, alexander.