Safelock is a file-based locking primitive which provides mutual exclusion between unrelated processes and threads.

Safelock offers advantages over POSIX and BSD file locks such as:

• Compatible with multi-threaded applications
• Support for lock attempt timeouts
• Detection of crashed lock holders
• Detailed lock status (PID, lock age, custom data)

Safelock requires POSIX.1-2008 robust mutexes. Tested under Linux 2.6.32 and Solaris 11.

Review safelock.h or http:https://mpx.github.com/safelock/ for detailed documentation.

License: MIT

Mark Pulford <[email protected]>

#include "safelock.h"
...
safelock_t lock;
err = safelock_open(&lock, "lock.dat", 0660);
err = safelock_lock(lock, SAFELOCK_LOCK_WAIT, 42);
...
err = safelock_unlock(lock);
err = safelock_close(&lock);