Re: copying sigc::signals

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2010 01:48:05 +0530
sankar bose <shankarbose imp gmail com> wrote:
> How about using Boost signal2 lib ?? . Its thread safe also .

boost::signal2 is a fine library which is very versatile indeed and
also claims thread safety.  I considered using it instead of going
through the laborious process of writing some (much simpler) thread-safe
signal/slot classes of my own.

The trouble with boost is that it carries so much with it.  It is not
designed to be separated out into separate installable modules, so to
use one component you have to install an enormous tarball.  I don't
think gtkmm could carry that with it, and it is also as Murray Cumming
has mentioned has its own ideas on source and binary compatibility.

Unfortunately it does not look as if signal/slots are going to make
their way into C++0x.  I might as well have my beef about C++0x threads
here as well, since they are tangentially linked to signals.  There is a
std::thread::future and std::thread::promise component in draft C++0x
which is so goddamn complex and low level that it is practically
unusable without writing shed loads of code of your own, all so that
exceptions can be passed from one thread to another in the most arcane
circumstances. I have resorted to writing my own much simpler and more
usable thread future class as well, based on pthreads.

Chris