If you need multithreading, using POSIX threads will give your application
portability, even to non-Linux embedded systems. For example, they're supported
by EL/IX (see
http://sources.redhat.com/elix/),
eCos,
RTEMs,
and virtually all desktop systems.
POSIX threads support is supplied with glibc2 as an add-on, enabled by
configuring with
'--enable-add-ons=linuxthreads'.
It is also possible to build older (i.e. smaller) libc5 with
LinuxThreads?. See
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/linuxthreads/faq.html
LinuxThread? support has now been integrated into the official
gdb release
(currently 5.0), which makes thread debugging much easier. Versions of
gdb
prior to 5.0 did not support threads directly, although you can 'attach' to the
thread processes individually.
The courageous can also call
clone() directly.
