Create a boost::thread and pass it to a HANDLE - c++

Question

I have the following code:
unsigned long ClassName::fn_StartTesterPresentThread()
{
// m_hTesterPresent is a HANDLE
if (m_hTesterPresent == NULL)
{
DWORD dwThreadId = 0;
m_hTesterPresent = CreateThread(NULL, 0, th_TesterPresent, this, 0, &dwThreadId);
}
return ACTION_SUCCESS;
}
The CreateThread function is Windows-specific, but the code needs to be ported to Linux/non-platform-specific.
I now need a way to create a boost::thread and pass it into the HANDLE m_hTesterPresent.
I was thinking about something like this:
unsigned long Class::fn_StartTesterPresentThread()
{
if (m_hTesterPresent == NULL)
{
DWORD dwThreadId = 0;
boost::thread threadTesterPresent(&m_hTesterPresent);
threadTesterPresent.join();
}
return ACTION_SUCCESS;
}
Is this the correct way? Sadly, I can't yet compile or test because I still have other parts of the project to port.
Furthermore, the project is a DLL and I don't have the client yet that calls the functions in the DLL.
Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

The argument to boost::thread should be a function to call, here th_TesterPresent.
If you are porting this code to non-Windows environments, I suggest you use typedefs to distinguish between the different kinds of HANDLEs.
Then you can have:
#ifndef WINDOWS
typedef boost::thread* THREAD_HANDLE;
typedef boost::mutex MUTEX_HANDLE;
#else
typedef HANDLE THREAD_HANDLE;
typedef HANDLE MUTEX_HANDLE;
#endif
and store THREAD_HANDLE / MUTEX_HANDLE values in various place. Instead of calling OS-specific functions, you can then call generic "createThreadHandle" functions that dispatch to different functions depending on the OS.
Alternatively, you could port your code to an OS-agnostic framework like boost and solve two problems in one go.