Re: [upnp-sdk-dev] Patches: Remove ithread.h header and change users over to pthreads

[Hartwig D. <har...@gm...>]

2006/4/26, qxc@ <qx...@gm...>...
>
> there is one big problem with this change: the current variant offers an
> easy way to port the library to other operation systems that do NOT use
> the
> pthreads-thingy (like Windows).
>
> Currently the adaption has to be done in ithreads.h only, using this
> change
> developers have to modify the code everywhere.
>
Hi,

I do not agree with this argument. libupnp currently depends on posix
threads functionality, renaming functions from pthread_xxx to ithread_xxx
does nothing to change this. No additional functionality is provided by the
ithread header!! Hence, the fact that libupnp requires posix threads (and
uses its data-structures) is hidden, which is IMHO a bad thing. If libupnp
was using actually using a portable threads library, it would be a
completely different story.

Once somebody decides to port libupnp to a platform without posix threads,
the functionality of the required subset of pthreads has to be provided for
that platform. Why not implement it as a separate library, preferrably
called libpthread and providing a header pthread.h (it could still be
distributed with the libupnp source code, but at least for me, this seems
like an independent task)?  BTW, there is a pthread library for win32, see
http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/, so no need to worry about windows.

BTW, there is something else to consider about these patches: projects usin=
g
libupnp might have to be changed, if they use ithread.h, thus this is a
user-visible API change (checked with gmediaserver, which does use this
header, if only in a few places).

Hartwig