How would you implement a basic event-loop?

Question

If you have worked with gui toolkits, you know that there is a event-loop/main-loop that should be executed after everything is done, and that will keep the application aliv

Answer 1

I would use a simple, light-weight messaging library called ZeroMQ (http://www.zeromq.org/). It is an open source library (LGPL). This is a very small library; on my server, the whole project compiles in about 60 seconds.

ZeroMQ will hugely simplify your event-driven code, AND it is also THE most efficient solution in terms of performance. Communicating between threads using ZeroMQ is much faster (in terms of speed) than using semaphores or local UNIX sockets. ZeroMQ also be a 100% portable solution, whereas all the other solutions would tie your code down to a specific operating system.