Boost.Threads

Bibliography

Good general background reading. Includes descriptions of Path Expressions, Message Passing, and Remote Procedure Call in addition to the basics. Section 3.3 explains why semaphores are considered error prone.

Boost.Threads is one of many Boost libraries. The Boost web site includes a great deal of documentation and general information which applies to all Boost libraries. Current copies of the libraries including documentation and test programs may be downloaded from the web site.

"This paper describes the evolution of language features for multiprogramming from event queues and semaphores to critical regions and monitors." Includes analysis of why events are considered error-prone. Also noteworthy because of an introductory quotation from Christopher Alexander; Brinch Hansen was years ahead of others in recognizing that pattern concepts applied to software too.

Nineteen of the original seminal papers by Dijkstra, Brinch Hansen, and Hoare, plus a current (2001) Overview by Brinch Hansen. Although expensive, it is hard to imagine anyone who is interested in understanding the underpinnings of any form of concurrent programming who would not want to own this book. May not be of interest for those who just want to use Boost.Threads and don't care about the design issues hidden behind the curtain.

David R. Butenhof, Programming with POSIX Threads, Addison-Wesley 1997, ISBN 0-201-63392-2 http://cseng.aw.com/book/0,3828,0201633922,00.html

This is a very readable explanation of threads and how to use them. Many of the insights given apply to all multithreaded programming, not just POSIX Threads.

C.A.R Hoare, Monitors: An Operating System Structuring Concept, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 17, No. 10. October 1974, pp. 549-557 http://www.acm.org/classics/feb96/

Hoare and Brinch Hansen's work on Monitors is the basis for reliable multithreading patterns. This is one of the most often referenced papers in all of computer science, and with good reason. It is included in [Brinch Hansen 02]

ISO/IEC 14882:1998(E) Programming Language C++ http://www.ansi.org

This is the official C++ Standards document. Available from the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) Electronic Standards Store.

Identifies many of the unique failure modes and debugging difficulties associated with concurrent programs.

Douglas C. Schmidt and Irfan Pyarali, Strategies for Implementing POSIX Condition Variables on Win32, Department of Computer Science, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/win32-cv-1.html

Rationale for understanding Boost.Threads condition variables. Note that Alexander Terekhov found some bugs in the implementation given in this article, so pthreads-win32 and Boost.Threads are even more complicated yet.

Douglas C. Schmidt, Michael Stal, Hans Rohnert and Frank Buschmann, Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture Volume 2 - Patterns for Concurrent and Networked Objects, Wiley 2000, ISBN 0-471-60695-2 http://www.wiley.com/Corporate/Website/Objects/Products/0,9049,104671,00.html

This is a very good explanation of how to apply several patterns useful for concurrent programming. Among the patterns documented is the Monitor Pattern mentioned frequently in the Boost.Threads documentation.

The first book a C++ programmer should own. Note that the 3rd edition (and subsequent editions like the Special Edition) has been rewritten to cover the ISO standard language and library.