Hi,

[ I first posted this to the Lazarus mailing list, but I think my questions are actually more related to FPC itself. I apologize for the cross posting in advance. ]

I'm busy writing a Thread Manager demo in FPC & Lazarus to help me understanding threads better. This demo will then serve as a good example of how to use threads and synchronization. No better way to learn something than writing code! :)

A quick summary of what I want to do:
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* You can create a Sync Object by selecting one of the following types: No Synchronization, Critical Section, Mutex or Semaphore.

* Then you can create as many threads as you want. Default thread priority is Normal. Each thread counts down from 100% to 0% at which point the thread is completed.

* A grid will show you all the threads you created. Each grid line represents a thread.

* You can Stop, Resume or Kill an individual thread.

* You can change an individual thread's Priority (tpIdle thru tpTimeCritical), though under Linux I know the thread priority is a integer value. tpXXX values will be displayed in the grid.

* You can also act on all threads: Kill All, Stop All and Resume All.

Questions:
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1. Is there any other synchronization methods that FPC supports?

2. Is there a platform independent way of creating a Mutex? eg: A CreateMutex() function that maps to each platforms specific implementation. Something like the TCriticalSection class.

3. Same as (2), but for Semaphores.