C++ portable IPC

Question

I am porting a console application that was written in C targeting Linux. I want to make the code as portable as possible, so that it can also be used on Windows and other OSs. So far, I was able to replace all of the Linux-specific code such as pthreads, semaphores and filesystem operations with corresponding C++ stdlib headers.

One of the features the application has is to run as client-server architecture, to allow background calculations and persisting and reusing state when CLI client exits. I have read about various IPC method such as sockets, pipes and shared memory, but they always use unportable syscalls.

Is there any way to pull this off using just C++ and stdlib? The only solution I can think of is file-based communication, but it seems to hard to maintain atomicity, especially with multiple clients, and server has to poll file for changes as all notification methods seem to be OS-specific as well. Latest question on Stackoverflow about it is 15 years old, so perhaps something has been proposed to solve this in C++23 and onwards.

The C++ language by itself (including the standard library) has no support for IPC. But sockets API is quite portable (common OSs use similar APIs) or if you can use boost - it is quite portable and supports IPC. — wohlstad
– wohlstad, Commented Apr 6 at 11:24
I think in your case, Boost.Interprocess, ZeroMQ or Poco will do fine. — Nikita Struk
– Nikita Struk, Commented Apr 6 at 11:38

wohlstad · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-06 13:56:02Z

4

As of today, the C++ language by itself (including the standard library), does not support any IPC mechanism.

Moreover, the language does not even have the notion of a process (threads were added in C++11, but not processes).

Your only option is some API/library.

Some viable options:

If you can use boost (which is considered quite portable), there are 2 relevant modules:
(1) Boost.Interprocess - contains a lot of building blocks for IPC, like synchronization objects, shared memory etc.
(2) Boost.Asio - a library for network and low-level I/O, which has good support for sockets.
If you cannot use boost, you can use the more-or-less standard API for sockets which many common OSs support (with functions like bind,send, etc.).

A (personal) observation:
Of course it may vary depending on the systems requirements etc. but I found that sockets are usually a good default approach. They are relatively easy to manage, supported on most systems, have reasonable performance, and allow you to easily scale to multiple machines.

edited Apr 6 at 13:56

answered Apr 6 at 13:50

wohlstad

36k18 gold badges79 silver badges112 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Dominik Kaszewski Apr 6 at 15:46

"language does not even have the notion of a process" that is a point worth emphasising, and likely the reason we won't get any IPC without full-blown networking

wohlstad Apr 6 at 15:49

@DominikKaszewski I agree it's unlikely that we'll get something like that soon. But who knows ...

Coder · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-06 11:34:24Z

2

No, as far as I know, nothing regarding IPC has been included in the newer C++ standards.

However, for such cases, you can use the preprocessor to write platform-specific code. This also makes your code platform-independent, as the platform-specific code is then only used on the respective system.

#ifdef _WIN32
// Windows specific code
#endif

#ifdef __linux__
// Linuxspecific code
#endif

answered Apr 6 at 11:34

Coder

2472 silver badges12 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

C++ portable IPC

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related