Background
this documentation says that it is possible to adapt the library to new (unsupported) operation system. Because the OS (a real time OS) I would like to support is close to Win32, I would expect little code changes. I have no experience with Boost Thread and Boost Interprocess .
Questions
Would you recommend to use Boost's Thread and Boost's Interprocess, if the
plattform is not supported?
What are the benefits and drawbacks?
Which alternatives would you consider?
All this depend on your needs. Using a portable library has the obvious advantages. Stabilizing a new platform could take some time.
I would suggest you to create tickets for each one of the features that doesn't work for the specific platform and work closely with the Boost authors.
Related
I am a beginner of c++ parallel computing. However, my project requires that I would need to use c++98 (stdlibc++) for it. I search online and it seems most of the tutorials is based on c++11 thread. I noted that boost_thread is an implementation for c++98 but there seems to be much less available tutorial. So I would like to ask what is the best way for me to learn and implement parallel computing for my project.
Eventually, my project would require calculations based on hundreds of cores and computing nodes. Would multi-threading be sufficient or do I have to use Boost_MPI? Thank you.
If you are limited to c++98 that means that you won't have all the thread managing and locking mechanisms as part of the language.
Therefore you will have to implement them by yourself based on available OS APIs.
There are different APIs for Windows and Linux.
Here is an example of C++ wrapper for Linux pthread library.
And this is an example of C++ wrapper for Windows Threads.
So your project won't be portable unless you create (or find somewhere) a class which hides these libraries behind a common interface under which it implements the same logic for Windows and Linux differed by #ifdef WINDOWS / #ifdef LINUX.
Regarding
what is the best way for me to learn and implement parallel computing
for my project.
There is no a correct answer for this. Look for some basic Multi Threading tutorials. Try to implement few simple programs (before you move to a big project) and come back when you face difficulties with more specific questions.
I have heard about boost but never used it so I can't provide any feedback on that. But again, you need to ask specific question. You can provide some specific requirements from your project and ask question based on them.
Anyway dive into boost documentation, you can find there threads related libraries (also pay attention for boost usage license).
I am new to BOOST
We are planning to move from ACE to BOOST. We are not using complete ACE but just part of the ACE library and some are mentioned below
ACE_THREAD
ACE_OS
ACE_Condition
ACE_Timer
ACE_Hash
ACE_Semaphore
ACE_Time_Value
Is this or similar functionality/api available in BOOST . Most Important is there ACE_Task_Base kind of functionality in BOOST
I want to know is this possible using BOOST and any problem of using BOOST. My Product is pure C++, heavy Network and Threads on Windows and Unices
ACE_Semaphore & ACE_THREAD & ACE_Condition
The above are all part of boost::threads
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/doc/html/thread.html
C++11
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread
ACE_OS
Some common things are done in boost w.r.t. OS but it depends on what parts of this you are using. There is boost::system and boost::filesystem, threading above and many more. Some of the lower level calls you'll need to handle I suspect.
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/libs/system/doc/index.html
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/libs/filesystem/doc/index.htm
ACE_Timer
boost::asio can be used to create timers which are similar to this and this lib may provide more of the function of ACE (or the mechanisms to create it)
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/doc/html/boost_asio.html
ACE_Hash
ACE_Hash - again there is a lot of function here, but it could be replaced/implemented with boost or C++11
Boost:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/doc/html/hash.html
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/doc/html/unordered.html
c++11:
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/unordered_map
ACE_Task_Base
I would suspect you'll need to create your own replacement for the functionality here. The messages and message parsing mechanisms are quite involved in ACE. Threading is covered above, but a manager for created threads again is likely to need implementing.
I am looking to write a server application in C++ that is meant to handle tens of thousands of clients simultaneously. It should run under Windows and Linux. I have been looking around for frameworks and libraries and have come across Boost Asio, which seems like a highly mature and widely used alternative. I just have trouble wrapping my head around strands/thread pools, mainly because of the millions of templates. My background is mainly in C, so am not really used to the template mess that Boost in general seems to be full of. I tried to find someone to develop a relatively thin wrapper around Boost Asio that would take care of the threading/synchronization aspect using strands, bind and the like, but have been unable to find someone yet who can do it within my budget (2 or 300 US dollars).
Can any of you recommend any other libraries that scale as well as Boost Asio (e.g. with IOCP on Windows and epoll on Linux etc), or a source where I might find skilled Boost developers looking for smaller freelance jobs?
Thanks very much in advance for any help.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
Best 4 choices i know
I really like zeromq.. but libuv seems interesting.. (libev and libevent are very nice too)
zeromq
libevent (as said)
libev
libuv (Its purpose is to abstract
IOCP on windows and libev on Unix systems and it is node.js network layer)
ACE is the framework you are looking for. Even boost Asio is just an implementation of Proactor pattern, which was introduced by Douglas C. Schmidt. He is best known as the author of POSA Vol.2 and the creator of ACE framework.
The Boost.Asio library offers side-by-side support for synchronous
and asynchronous operations ... based on the Proactor design pattern
[POSA2].
Although it is a cross-platform C++ network framework and uses template,
just simple template is used. (or not at all)
My background is mainly in C, too, and I don't like Boost's massive template-programming style. However, ACE wasn't like that.
Try libevent on for size. Its whole raison d'etre is to address the C10K problem. I'd say it's probably more lightweight than boost.
Try Pulsar Server Framework. Main benefit is it is built over libuv network library (used by node.js) that uses asynchronous I/O based on event loops.
It’s perfectly scalable. You can just go adding servers as your user base increases.
It is designed to work with server farm.
Highly configurable and easy to use
Currently it has been built for Windows x64 server.
I am looking for a good and stable threadpool library for C++ that's fairly well documented. I know about the Native Windows thread pool API and the newer Vista Thread Pool API, however my program requires some backward compatibility, so perhaps an outside library I can provide with the program is better.
I have looked into Boost's threadpool and it doesn't look bad at all, unfortunatly it is not very well documented.
Does anyone know any other libraries that have a ThreadPool in C++? (for Windows)
A portable threadpool library that claims to be 'production ready'. You may want to check that out.
Intel TBB is another threading library that has some neat stuff. I find the framework for evaluating a tree of expressions in parallell especially nice.
Qt has a threading library with some nice high-level operations like map/reduce etc, as well as low-level threading stuff and thread-pool support.
Qt might be a bit big for you though, but you can use a part of it pretty easily.
Have a look at the ThreadPool and TaskManager classes from the Poco C++ libraries.
With respect to the boost thread pool: this link might be useful: http://think-async.com/Asio/Recipes
There's also ACE which does thread-pooling over networks, so it's a fair bit more complex. (but deserves mentioning here, IMO)
I am looking for lightweight multi-threading framework for C++. I found POSIX Threads.
Please, share you practical experience with POSIX threads: before I start with it I want to know its pros and cons from real people, not from wiki.
If you practically compared it with anything (maybe, better), it would be interesting to know either.
UPD: cross platform features are really important for me, so I would appreciate this direction described.
UPD2: I already have an experience with one framework for QNX / Win32, but it is not lightweight and - oh, I forgot to mention, - it is commercial, not free, but I need a free one.
I found Boost.Threads to be really nice, especially after the 1.35 rewrite. POSIX threads on Windows is not so trivial, and it's a C API, so I would definitely prefer Boost to it. It has all the stuff you need, is portable and requires little setup.
Another C thread API is GThreads from GLib. There is a 1-to-1 mapping between some gthread and pthread calls such as pthread_create, but gthreads have 2 big features that I have found very useful:
thread pools and
asynchronous queues for sending messages between threads.
The thread pools are very powerful, allowing things like dynamic resizing of the pool. See http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/2.20/glib-Threads.html
The POSIX threading API is a C API, not C++.
What do you want to use it for? Personally, I find it to be a very clumsy and overly verbose API. But it is your best bet if you want to do cross-platform development on Unix/Linux-like operating systems. It is not natively supported on Windows.
Personally, I would not use a threading or any other OS dependent API directly in your code. Build another abstraction layer on top of it. For example, we built what we call an "OS layer"; a C++ framework for working with threads, semaphores, timers, mutexes, etc. Our code uses this exclusively. Underneath the hood, we have implementations for POSIX, Win32, INTEGRITY, and vxWorks. This lets our code work on a large variety of platforms.
If you don't want to build your own layer, you can look towards reusing many others like Boost, Qt, etc.
I used POSIX a while ago for a program I wrote. It worked fine on Linux and Solaris and it's not terribly complicated to implement. My brother on the other hand is a Windows programmer and preferred boost to Posix. I guess it depends on your target. I found boost to be a bit on the bloated side and had heard bad things about it. My brother thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I suppose it's a ford vs chevy thing. Everyone will have an opinion.
If you don't like Boost's thread API, then you might want to look at POCO's.
As you are mentioning QNX have a look at ACE. It is a vast framework that is available for many platforms (including QNX).
Others have already mentioned Boost.
You are well advised to use one of these libraries instead of the low level, non portable and error prone C APIs.
Boost threads library is probably your best bet if you work in C++. I had very positive experience with it both on Unix and win32. Avoid ACE - bad design, wrong approach. Also take a look at Intel TBB, though I haven't used it in practice.
I've found it to be pretty similar to the win32 thread API, the only (real) difference you need to be aware of is that win32 mutexes don't block when used on the same thread while posix do. Apart from that, it's a pretty straight forward API.