dlrThread Utility Library

Introduction

This library is built on top of boost::thread. The idea is to provide some high level abstractions such as shared FIFOs and monitor objects so that the user doesn't have to think at the level of locks and mutexes. The current version number is shown in file VERSION.TXT, and recent changes can be seen in the file RELEASE_NOTES.TXT.

Credits

Please see the file CONTRIBUTORS.TXT in this directory.

Contact

Bugfixes and patches welcome! Please see the file LICENSE.TXT in this directory for up-to-date contact information.

License

Please see the file LICENSE.TXT in this directory.

Platform

This library is in regular use under Linux (32- & 64-bit), and not-so-regular use under Windows (32-bit). It should be portable to any platform supporting ISO C++.

Status

This is a growing library. Allthough efforts will be made to maintain a consistent interface, some changes are inevitable. Please plan accordingly.

Dependencies

In order to build this library, you must first install the following libraries:

dlrCommon dlrPortability dlrUtilities boost::thread

In order to build the unit tests for this library, you must also install the following libraries:

dlrTest dlrRandom

Boost::thread is available from http://www.boost.org. You should be able to get dlrRandom, dlrTest, dlrPortability, dlrUtilities, and dlrCommon from the same place you got this library. Note that these libriaries, dlrRandom in particular, may have other dependencies. In particular, as of version 2.0, dlrRandom depends on lapack, blas, and (possibly) g2c.

Please see the Installation section for an important note about boost::thread version when building under visual studio on Windows.

Installation

Visual Studio

If you're building under Visual C++, load the solution file:

./visualc/dlrThread.sln

Note that the visual studio build files have the boost::threads version number hardcoded into their include path. If you are using a different version of boost::thread than I used to create the build files, you'll have to manually edit this include path. Do this in visual studio by right clicking on the "dlrThread" (and "dlrThreadTest") line(s) in the solution explorer pane, selecting "Properties" in the resulting context menu. This will open a dialog window. Go to the "C/C++" category, select the "General" tab, and then edit the "Additional Include Directories" field.

Building this file will put libraries in

"C:\Program Files\dlr_libs\{Release,Debug}"

and put include files in

"C:\Program Files\dlr_libs\include"

You can override these default installation locations from within visual studio.

NOTE: Microsoft's compiler considers much of the C++ Standard Library to be deprecated. Building this code under recent versions of VC++ generates lots of warnings telling you to use the use the confusingly named "Safe Standard C++ Library," which isn't standard at all, and as far as I know isn't portable to any other platforms. It's possible to disable these warnings. I encourage you to do so by adding "/D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" and "/D_SCL_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" to the compiler command line via the "properties" dialog for the .vcproj file within Visual Studio. I've done this for the .vcproj files included with dlr_libs, but you may find these warnings popping up in your own code when you include dlr_libs header files. Don't be fooled.

Please be aware that I hardly ever use windows, so the .sln/.vcproj files are usually a little out of date. I occasionally check that friends who use these libraries under windows are still happy, but I don't get patches too often. Let me know if you have any trouble, and please feel free to email with updates. Also note that the .vcproj files are all configured to build multi-threaded code. This may cause some trouble if you're linking with projects that use single threaded code. See the code generation page of the project properties dialog to change this.

GNU Autotools

On every other platform, building and installing is done via GNU Autotools. If you're building from a tarball, the simplest possible version looks like this:

> tar -xvf dlrthread-x.y.z.tar.gz
> cd dlrthread-x.y.z
> ./configure
> make
> make install

If you're using the source files from subversion, you need to add a step:

> [get source from svn]
> ./bootstrap
> ./configure
> make
> make install

Of course, you may want to specify an installation directory:

> [get source from cvs and run ./bootstrap, or unpack tarball]
> ./configure --prefix=/home/jfisher/software
> make
> make install

Or some compiler options:

> [get source from cvs and run ./bootstrap, or unpack tarball]
> env CXXFLAGS="-g -Wall" ./configure \
    --prefix=/home/jfisher/software
> make
> make install

For more information on configure options:

> ./configure --help

Thanks, David LaRose