[jcranmer]

The language basis for threading is now the C11/C++11 memory model [1], even if you don't directly use it--it's baked into the compiler IR. I would argue that in the 2020s, you should be using C11/C++11 threading instead of direct pthreads if you're writing new code.

(And yes, Hans Boehm was one of the people instrumental in getting the threaded memory model adopted.)

[1] If you really want to be pedantic, it's the current verbiage that rules, independent of the actual language version you request. This is one of those situations where trying to describe the semantics more formally is challenging, so a lot of the changes in the specification aren't supposed to actually be changing how things are compiled but how things are described in the text.

[wahern]

In some ways the POSIX API is better. For example, the POSIX API permits you to statically define and initialize pthread_mutex_t, pthread_once_t, and similar objects. Without static initialization you're stuck in a catch-22 because to initialize such objects at runtime you have to rely on some other implicitly serialized control flow, such as by invoking initializers from main(), which is particularly cumbersome and error prone for libraries.

C++ has it a little easier because, AFAIU, the language itself supports static constructors--i.e. the ability to run [mostly] ad hoc code to initialize static objects at runtime (specifically load time).

The C11/C++11 threading API lacks static initializers because when the specification was being developed Windows light-weight threading primitives didn't support such a capability. Basically, the C11/C++11 API had to take a lowest common denominator approach, which in most cases meant dropping useful features from the POSIX API so Microsoft didn't have to reimplement their primitives. (The hope was that C11- and C++11-compliant implementations would become widely available immediately if the standard made it easy to wrap existing OS primitives, but unfortunately implementations were--and arguably still are, especially for C--many years late.)

Also, the memory model is mostly distinct from the threading APIs. The memory model was more important for nailing down atomics in C11 and C++11. The threading APIs are much higher level, and because they rely on opaque types and function calls, their implementation and the necessary compiler support (ISA memory barriers, compiler code motion barriers, etc) was largely transparent.