pthreads-win32 provides an implementation of pthreads for Win32.
pthread-win32 - The POSIX 1003.1-2001 standard defines an application programming interface (API) for writing multithreaded applications. This interface is known more commonly as pthreads. A good number of modern operating systems include a threading library of some kind: Solaris (UI) threads, Win32 threads, DCE threads, DECthreads, or any of the draft revisions of the pthreads standard. The trend is that most of these systems are slowly adopting the pthreads standard API, with application developers following suit to reduce porting woes.
Win32 does not, and is unlikely to ever, support pthreads natively. This project seeks to provide a freely available and high-quality solution to this problem.
Various individuals have been working on independent implementations of this well-documented and standardised threading API, but most of them never see the light of day. The tendency is for people to only implement what they personally need, and that usually does not help others. This project attempts to consolidate these implementations into one implementation of pthreads for Win32.
Level of standards conformance
Pthreads-win32 currently implements a large subset of the POSIX standard threads related API. See our conformance page for a complete list of options and functions implemented as well as those that aren't.
HTML formatted manual pages are now available inside the package and on this site. Peruse them for additional Pthreads-win32 information.
How does it work?
The Win32 pthreads is normally implemented as a dynamic link library (DLL). This has some notable advantages from the Win32 point of view, but it also more closely models existing pthread libraries on UNIX which are usually shared objects (e.g. libpthread.so). Please note though, that the library can also be built for static linking if necessary.
Official Website: http://www.sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/
Useful Linkes:
- Conformance
- Manual pages online – edited for Pthreads-win32
- FAQ
