Thread And Process Management Overview

This document provides an overview of thread and process management.

Purpose

Provides access to processes, threads, thread-local storage, and access synchronisation.

These APIs provide support for a programming style that employs multiple threads or processes that share resource protected by synchronisation mechanisms such as mutexes. Symbian platform provides alternatives to this style that are better suited to a limited resource environment:

  • the active objects framework provided by the Asynchronous Services API is usually preferred to multi-threading in Symbian platform programming

  • server programs can be used to serialise access to a shared resource

Description

Functionality is provided by a number of APIs. Use them as follows:

Threads And Processes Overview

Provides access to processes, threads, and thread-local storage.

Semaphores Overview

Synchronises access to shared resources within and between processes.

Mutexes Overview

Synchronises exclusive access to shared resources within and between processes.

Critical Sections Overview

Synchronises exclusive access to shared resources within a single process.