Performing cross-platform multithreading

To continue improving the user experience, we should make long-running tasks asynchronous, with fine-grained control over their execution. To do so, we implement an abstraction layer on top of the operating systems' threads.

Getting ready

Android NDK threads are based on POSIX threads. Take a look at the header file platforms\android-14\arch-arm\usr\include\pthread.h in your NDK folder.

How to do it...

1. Let's start with declarations of thread handle types:

   #ifndef _WIN32
   #include <pthread.h>
   typedef pthread_t thread_handle_t;
   typedef pthread_t native_thread_handle_t;
   #else
   #include <windows.h>
   typedef uintptr_t thread_handle_t;
   typedef uintptr_t native_thread_handle_t;
   #endif

2. Then, we declare the thread interface:

   class iThread
   {
   public:
     iThread::iThread():FThreadHandle( 0 ), FPendingExit(false) {}
     virtual ~iThread() {}
     void Start();
     void Exit( bool Wait );
     bool IsPendingExit() const { return FPendingExit; };
   protected:
    ...