Which thread lib to use on Win32 and other systems (was Re: [cairo] Recommendations for 1.4.0

[Tor Lillqvist]

Behdad Esfahbod writes:
 > which thread library should we prefer: pthread or native threads?

You mean just on Win32, or in general? Depends on how "foreign"
pthreads is on the platform in question. On most modern Unixes,
pthread comes with the OS, and is pretty close to native threads,
isn't it? The pthread API is used by much (most?) GNOMEish or KDEish
software already anyway on such platforms, yes?

But on Win32 pthreads-win32 is a 3rd-party DLL. No reason to drag in a
pthreads dependency there just for something as simple as in-process
mutexes.

 > I think the current "prefer pthread" is Ok if we provide a
 > --without-pthread option. Comments?

Sounds OK.

--tml