path: root/ANNOUNCE

                PTHREADS-WIN32 SNAPSHOT 1999-04-04
                ----------------------------------
       Web Site: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/pthreads-win32/
        Coordinator: Ross Johnson <rpj@ise.canberra.edu.au>


We are pleased to announce the availability of a new snapshot of
Pthreads-win32, an Open Source Software (OSS) implementation of the
Threads component of the POSIX 1003.1c 1995 Standard for Microsoft's
Win32 environment. Some functions from POSIX 1003.1b are supported.

Pthreads-win32 is free software, distributed under the GNU Library
General Public License (LGPL).

Pthreads-win32 is based substantially on a Win32 pthreads
implementation contributed by John E. Bossom <jebossom@cognos.com>.

Please see the 'Acknowledgements' section at the end of this
announcement for the list of contributors.


Change Summary
--------------

Some POSIX 1b functions which were internally supported are now
available as exported functions:

	sem_init
	sem_destroy
	sem_wait
	sem_trywait
	sem_post
	sched_yield
	sched_get_priority_min
	sched_get_priority_max

Some minor bugs have been fixed. See the ChangeLog file for details.


Level of standards conformance
------------------------------

The following POSIX 1003.1c 1995 options are defined:

      _POSIX_THREADS
      _POSIX_THREAD_SAFE_FUNCTIONS
      _POSIX_THREAD_ATTR_STACKSIZE


The following POSIX 1003.1c 1995 options are not defined:

      _POSIX_THREAD_ATTR_STACKADDR
      _POSIX_THREAD_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING
      _POSIX_THREAD_PRIO_INHERIT
      _POSIX_THREAD_PRIO_PROTECT
      _POSIX_THREAD_PROCESS_SHARED


The following functions are implemented:

      ---------------------------
      PThreads
      ---------------------------
      pthread_attr_init
      pthread_attr_destroy
      pthread_attr_getdetachstate
      pthread_attr_getstackaddr
      pthread_attr_getstacksize
      pthread_attr_setdetachstate
      pthread_attr_setstackaddr
      pthread_attr_setstacksize

      pthread_create
      pthread_detach
      pthread_equal
      pthread_exit
      pthread_join
      pthread_once
      pthread_self

      pthread_cancel
      pthread_cleanup_pop
      pthread_cleanup_push
      pthread_setcancelstate
      pthread_setcanceltype
      pthread_testcancel
          
      ---------------------------
      Thread Specific Data   
      ---------------------------
      pthread_key_create
      pthread_key_delete
      pthread_setspecific
      pthread_getspecific
                
      ---------------------------
      Mutexes
      ---------------------------
      pthread_mutexattr_init
      pthread_mutexattr_destroy
      pthread_mutexattr_getpshared
      pthread_mutexattr_setpshared

      pthread_mutex_init
      pthread_mutex_destroy
      pthread_mutex_lock
      pthread_mutex_trylock      
      pthread_mutex_unlock

      ---------------------------
      Condition Variables
      ---------------------------
      pthread_condattr_init
      pthread_condattr_destroy
      pthread_condattr_getpshared
      pthread_condattr_setpshared

      pthread_cond_init
      pthread_cond_destroy
      pthread_cond_wait
      pthread_cond_timedwait
      pthread_cond_signal
      pthread_cond_broadcast  

      ---------------------------
      Semaphores
      ---------------------------
      sem_init               (POSIX 1b)
      sem_destroy            (POSIX 1b)
      sem_post               (POSIX 1b)
      sem_wait               (POSIX 1b)
      sem_trywait            (POSIX 1b)

      ---------------------------
      RealTime Scheduling
      ---------------------------
      pthread_attr_getschedparam  
      pthread_attr_setschedparam  
      pthread_getschedparam
      pthread_setschedparam
      sched_get_priority_max (POSIX 1b)
      sched_get_priority_min (POSIX 1b)
      sched_yield            (POSIX 1b)

      ---------------------------
      Signals
      ---------------------------
      pthread_sigmask

      ---------------------------
      Static Initializers (macros)
      ---------------------------
      PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT
      PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER
      PTHREAD_COND_INITIALIZER   
      
      ---------------------------
      Thread-Safe C Runtime Library (macros)
      ---------------------------
      strtok_r
      asctime_r
      ctime_r
      gmtime_r
      localtime_r
      rand_r


The following functions are not implemented:
      
      ---------------------------
      RealTime Scheduling
      ---------------------------
      pthread_attr_getinheritsched
      pthread_attr_getschedpolicy
      pthread_attr_getscope
      pthread_attr_setinheritsched
      pthread_attr_setschedpolicy
      pthread_attr_setscope
      pthread_mutex_getprioceiling
      pthread_mutex_setprioceiling
      pthread_mutex_attr_getprioceiling
      pthread_mutex_attr_getprotocol
      pthread_mutex_attr_setprioceiling
      pthread_mutex_attr_setprotocol
      
      ---------------------------
      Fork Handlers
      ---------------------------
      pthread_atfork

      ---------------------------
      Stdio
      --------------------------- 
      flockfile
      ftrylockfile
      funlockfile
      getc_unlocked
      getchar_unlocked  
      putc_unlocked
      putchar_unlocked

      ---------------------------
      Thread-Safe C Runtime Library
      ---------------------------
      readdir_r
      getgrgid_r
      getgrnam_r
      getpwuid_r
      getpwnam_r
      
      ---------------------------
      Signals
      ---------------------------
      pthread_kill
      sigtimedwait
      sigwait
      sigwaitinfo
      
      
The library includes two non-API functions for creating cancellation
points in applications and libraries:
      
      pthreadCancelableWait
      pthreadCancelableTimedWait

      
Availability
------------ 

For the prebuilt DLL, export libs (for both MSVC and Mingw32), and
pthread.h:

ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/pthreads-win32/pthreads-dll-1999-03-16

Source tree:
      
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/pthreads-win32/pthreads-snap-1999-03-16.tar.gz
      
Source files are available in unpacked form at:
      
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/pthreads-win32/sources

      
Mailing List 
------------  
      
There is a mailing list for discussing pthreads on Win32. To join,
send email to:

        pthreads-win32-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com
      

Application Development Environments
------------------------------------
      
MSVC:
MSVC can be used of course.
      
Mingw32: (ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/egcs-1.1.1/)
Mingw32 must use the thread-safe MSVCRT library. You can link
against the export library libpthread32.a built under Mingw32
together with the version of pthread.dll built with MSVC.
      
Cygwin: (http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/)
Cygwin aims to provide a complete POSIX environment on top of Win32, including
threads. When this is complete, developers using Cygwin will not need
pthreads-win32. At this time, Cygwin has preliminary support for multithreaded
development, however, this is not turned on by default.

Generally:
For convenience, the following pre-built files can be downloaded from
the FTP site:

        ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/pthreads-win32/dll-latest/

        pthread.h       - the standard include file
        pthread.dll     - built with MSVC cl compiler
        pthread.lib     - built with MSVC cl compiler
        libpthread32.a  - built with Mingw32 (use with MSVC pthread.dll)
      
These are the only files you need in order to build POSIX threads
applications for Win32 using either MSVC or Mingw32.
      
See the FAQ file in the source tree for additional information.

      
Building the library with MSVC
-------------------------------  
      
There is currently no Makefile for building the library under MSVC.
There is a batch file "buildlib.bat" which will build the library.
      

Why you can't build the library with Cygwin or Mingw32 (yet)
------------------------------------------------------------
      
The library makes use of exception handling internally (Win32 SEH if
compiled with MSVC and C++ EH otherwise). Unfortunately, current
versions of egcs (g++) do not have thread-safe exception handling
and therefore the DLL pthread.dll cannot be built under either
Mingw32 or Cygwin.
      
      
Documentation
-------------
      
Currently, there is no documentation included in the package apart
from the copious comments in the source code.

For POSIX Thread API programming, several reference books are
available:  

        Programming with POSIX Threads
        David R. Butenhof
        Addison-Wesley (pub)

        Pthreads Programming
        By Bradford Nichols, Dick Buttlar & Jacqueline Proulx Farrell
        O'Reilly (pub)
      

Acknowledgements
----------------
      
This library is based substantially on a Win32 pthreads
implementation contributed by John Bossom <John.Bossom@cognos.com>.
      
The implementation of condition variables is derived from the work
of Douglas Schmidt et al
(http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/win32-cv-1.html).

Project Contributors (in order of appearance):

Ben Elliston <bje@cygnus.com>
Ross Johnson <rpj@ise.canberra.edu.au>
Robert Colquhoun <rjc@trump.net.au>
John E. Bossom <John.Bossom@cognos.com>
Anders Norlander <anorland@hem2.passagen.se>
Tor Lillqvist <tml@iki.fi>
Kevin Ruland <Kevin.Ruland@anheuser-busch.com>

      
Enjoy!

Ross Johnson