How do I guarantee fast shutdown of my win32 app?

Question

I\'ve got a C++ Win32 application that has a number of threads that might be busy doing IO (HTTP calls, etc) when the user wants to shutdown the application. Currently, I p

Answer 1

Best way: Do your work while the app is running, and do nothing (or as close to) at shutdown (works for startup too). If you stick to that pattern, then you can tear down the threads immediately (rather than "being nice" about it) when the shutdown request comes without worrying about work that still needs to be done.

In your specific situation, you'd probably need to wait for IO to finish (writes, at least) if you're doing local work there. HTTP requests and such you can probably just abandon/close outright (again, unless you're writing something). But if it is the case that you're writing during this shutdown and waiting on that, then you may want to notify the user of that, rather than letting your process look hung while you're wrapping things up.