What is Theron?
Theron is a lightweight, portable C++ class library for developing parallel applications. It implements a simple service-oriented model of concurrent processing based on the Actor Model.
With Theron, program objects are expressed as actors, which communicate exclusively via message passing. Written with actors, application code executes in parallel, seamlessly and automatically, with no need for locks, mutexes, or critical sections. See here for more information.
Theron is intended for writing parallel applications on a single machine, and includes no support for distributed concurrency (actors on different machines in a network).
The second major release of Theron represents a complete redesign with many simplifications and API changes.
The Theron library is easy to learn and straightforward to use. The distribution includes unit tests and an extensive set of code examples and runnable demos, augmented by online tutorials. Theron is Open Source and is distributed under a Creative Commons license. The Visual C++ and gcc compilers are supported, and a makefile and Visual Studio solution are provided.
Theron requires an underlying threading implementation. Implementations based on Boost Threads and Windows threads are provided. The Visual Studio solution builds out-of-the-box with Windows threads. In order to build with Boost Threads, a separate installation of Boost is required.
Consult the Theron user guide for more information. For download and installation instructions, read Getting started. Finally for worked examples aimed at making it easy to learn Theron, see the Tutorial section.
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