Guide to the POSIX Threads Library

This document is the "Guide to the POSIX Threads Library," published by Compaq in April 2001. It serves as a comprehensive manual for system and application programmers developing multithreaded applications and thread-safe libraries on OpenVMS Alpha/VAX and Tru64 UNIX platforms.

The guide covers:

• Principles of Multithreaded Programming: Including concepts, functional models (e.g., boss/worker, work crew, pipelining), and common programming issues such as reentrancy, thread safety, race conditions, and deadlocks.
• Compaq's Multithreading Run-Time Library: Which implements the IEEE POSIX 1003.1-1996 standard with UNIX98 extensions.

• Two Primary Interfaces:

  • The pthread interface for building portable multithreaded applications.
  • The proprietary tis (thread-independent services) interface for creating thread-safe libraries that can be used in both single-threaded and multithreaded contexts.

• Detailed Reference: For all pthread and tis routines and their attributes (e.g., for threads, mutexes, condition variables, read-write locks).

• Advanced Topics: Such as using an exceptions package for error handling and managing thread stacks.
• Platform-Specific Considerations: For Tru64 UNIX and OpenVMS systems, including debugging, exception handling, and migration from older cma and d4 (DCEthreads) interfaces.