pthreadsWinLin

Proof of concept for the main project UPnPlib to have POSIX threads on Microsoft Windows and Linux with cmake. This is a manual installation direct from the pthreads4w zipped source archive.

Using POSIX threads on Microsoft Windows

Microsoft does not support POSIX threads so we have to use a third party library. I use the well known pthreads4w library that we have to install first from source. Of course I can do it by script but that isn't the exercise. I want to show how it works.

First download and provide the pthreads4w library sources. At the time when this was written, it was pthreads4w-code-v3.0.0.zip. I do it with Powershell on MS Windows with curl:

PS> curl -L "https://sourceforge.net/projects/pthreads4w/files/latest/download" -o ".\pthreads4w-code.zip"
PS> Expand-Archive -LiteralPath .\pthreads4w-code.zip -DestinationPath .\src\
PS> Move-Item .\src\pthreads4w-code-*\ .\src\pthreads4w\

Build the library and provide its files. If in doubt look at its README.

PS> Set-Location .\src\pthreads4w\
PS> Copy-Item _ptw32.h,pthread.h,semaphore.h,sched.h -Destination ..\..\include\pthreads4w\
PS> nmake realclean VC-static
PS> Copy-Item libpthreadVC3.lib ..\..\lib\static\
PS> nmake realclean VC
PS> Copy-Item pthreadVC3.dll,pthreadVC3.lib -Destination ..\..\lib\shared\

If in doubt you can optional also run the test suite. Be patient, it takes some time.

PS> Set-Location .\tests\
PS> nmake clean VC
PS> Set-Location ..\

Now you should be able to configure and build the (test) application. To keep things simple I have used this pathnames here so the cmake script isn't very tolerant. Check to use the same paths given here.

PS> Set-Location ..\..\
PS> cmake -S . -B build
PS> cmake --build build --config Release

PS> .\build\Release\main-static.exe
DEBUG: return code from pthread_create() is: 0
Hello World from thread :-)

PS> Copy-Item .\lib\shared\pthreadVC3.dll .\build\Release\
PS> .\build\Release\main-shared.exe
DEBUG: return code from pthread_create() is: 0
Hello World from thread :-)

If the shared linked program does not find its .dll it will terminate silently. If you do not see the greeting then have a look at the .ddl and ensure that the program can find it. Copying it to the programs directory or to the system directory Windows\System32 will always do.

Using POSIX threads on Linux

Linux supports POSIX threads out of the box. We have only to link with the shared pthread system library. This is configured with cmake. There is nothing else to be done. Just execute e.g. with bash from the repository source directory:

~$ cmake -S . -B build
~$ cmake --build build
~$ ./build/main
DEBUG: return code from pthread_create() is: 0
Hello World from thread :-)

// Copyright (C) 2021 GPL 3 and higher by Ingo Höft,  <Ingo@Hoeft-online.de>
// Redistribution only with this Copyright remark. Last modified: 2021-08-19