Thread-safety problem in Boost.Function

[Douglas Gregor]

From Sean Huang, on the Boost mailing list:

The following code in function_template.hpp has me concerned:

template<typename Functor> void assign_to(Functor f) {

static vtable_type stored_vtable(f); if (stored_vtable.assign_to(f, functor)) vtable = &stored_vtable; else vtable = 0;

}

The function scope statics are not thread-safe as far as I know and this is potentially a show stopper for us (we're in the process of upgrading from 1.33.1 to 1.34+. Same usage in boost.serialization caused our application (very heavy threaded) to crash.

[Douglas Gregor]

(In [39240]) function/function_base.hpp, function/function_template.hpp:

• Switch from dynamic initialization of the vtable pointer to static initialization (Fixes #1260)
• Handle member pointers properly, only using mem_fn within the invoker to deal with all of the messy bits of calling member pointers

[alex_basakov@…]

Can't build 1.34.1 program_options library with newly provided function_base.hpp, function_template.hpp. MSVC 8.0 SP1.

[Douglas Gregor]

There is yet another updated function_base.hpp on the main Boost web site. This takes care of the problem for real.

[baf11@…]

Replying to dgregor:

There is yet another updated function_base.hpp on the main Boost web site. This takes care of the problem for real.

Just wanted to point out the main boost website has a typo -> s/cricial/critical/.