Can I get Unix's pthread.h to compile in Windows?

c windows multithreading pthreads
naspinski picture naspinski · Jan 27, 2010 · Viewed 139.3k times · Source

If I try to compile a program with

#include <pthread.h>

in it, I get the error:

pthread.h: No such file or directory

Is it possible to get this to compile in a Windows environment?

I am using Vista with the latest MinGW.

I do not want to use the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX Version 3.5 as I will have to move this to a Unix environment.

Answer

user257111 picture user257111 · Jan 27, 2010

pthread.h is a header for the Unix/Linux (POSIX) API for threads. A POSIX layer such as Cygwin would probably compile an app with #include <pthreads.h>.

The native Windows threading API is exposed via #include <windows.h> and it works slightly differently to Linux's threading.

Still, there's a replacement "glue" library maintained at http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/ ; note that it has some slight incompatibilities with MinGW/VS (e.g. see here).

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