CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowssynchronizationipc
cloudraven
cloudraven

Reputation: 2544

Interprocess synchronization barrier in Windows

I am trying to establish a barrier between to different processes in Windows. They are essentially two copies of the same process (Running them as two separate threads instead of processes is not an option). The idea is to place barriers at different stages of the program, to make sure that both processes start each stage at the same time. What is the most efficient way of implementing this in Windows?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1016

Answers (1)

Eugene Mayevski 'Callback
Eugene Mayevski 'Callback

Reputation: 46070

Use a named event (see CreateEvent and WaitForSingleObject API functions). You would need two events per barrier - each event created in another instance of the application. Then both instances wait for each other's event. Of course, these events can be reused later for another barrier.

There exists one complexity, though - as event names are globally unique (let's say so for simplicity), each event would have a different name, maybe prefixed by the instance's process ID. So each instance of the application would have to get another instance's ID in order to find the name of the event created by another instance.

If you have a windowed application, you can broadcast a message which will inform the second instance of the application about an existence of the first instance.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions