Cross-platform development

[Alex F]

I need to write program package for using in different OS. For Windows only, I could use the following API:
1) CreateThread or _beginthreadex for multithreading
2) CreateEvelt, WaitForSingleObject, WaitForMultipleObjects, InitilazeCriticalSection etc. - for thread synchronization
3) CreateFile, ReadFile etc. - for file handling
4) CreateFile, ReadFile etc. - for serial communications.

Now, I need to implement all this stuff for using in different OS. What are my options?

[Lindley]

For (1) and (2), the most common options are pthreads (C-based) and Boost Threads (C++-based).

For (3), the C standard of course provides FILE*s, fprintf/fscanf/etc, and the C++ standards provides ifstreams and ofstreams. Which of those you choose to use is largely based on personal preference. The C functions are a bit faster, but the C++ functions are type-safe.

For (4), you can of course use the Berkley Sockets interface; I believe most of the WinSock functions are aliased to this anyway. However, this is a very low-level approach. One alternative is the Boost ASIO library, which I believe includes socket IO classes which fit into the C++ iostreams framework.

[Alex F]

Thank you,
p. 4 is about serial communications (COM port), and not sockets. What about this?

[Lindley]

No direct experience with that, sorry. I guess I assumed you meant "serialized", eg network, communications.

[Alex F]

I found serial_port class in the Boost library. It looks like Boost has everything I need. Thank you.

[ninja9578]

1) 2) pthreads is very nice, I use them in cross platform development, there is a hitch though. There is no Windows x64 version of pthreads, nor are there any plans for it.

3) fopen, fclose, fgets...

4) This one, I don't know about. I use serial communication myself, but I turn the feature off when compiling the software for *nix. If you come up with a good solution, let me know

[nuzzle]

1) CreateThread or _beginthreadex for multithreading
2) CreateEvelt, WaitForSingleObject, WaitForMultipleObjects, InitilazeCriticalSection etc. - for thread synchronization

Note that mutithreading will be in the next C++ standard,

http://www.devx.com/SpecialReports/Article/38883

[ninja9578]

That's true, and C++ 0x (... is it 1x now?) uses regular types for arguments, whereas currently, you're stuck using a single opaque pointer (using POSIX)

[Lindley]

The C++0x threading mechanism is supposed to be heavily based on Boost Threads, wherein you write a functor to start the thread if you need to pass in data, rather than relying on a void* like pthreads.