When to use pthread_cancel and not pthread_kill?

Question

When does one use pthread_cancel and not pthread_kill?

Answer 1

You can not "kill" a thread with pthread_kill(). If you try to send SIGTERM or SIGKILL to a thread with pthread_kill(), it will terminate the entire process.

I subscribe to the theory that the PROGRAMMER and not the THREAD (nor the API designers) should totally control its own software in all aspects, including which threads cancel which.

I once worked in a firm where we developed a server that used a pool of worker threads and one special master thread that had the responsibility to create, suspend, resume and terminate the worker threads at any time it wanted. Of course the threads used some sort of synchronization, but it was of our design and not some API-enforced dogmas. The system worked very well and efficiently!

This was under Windows. Then I tried to port it for Linux and I stumbled at the pthreads' stupid "theories" about how wrong it is to suspend another thread etc. So I had to abandon pthreads and directly use the native Linux system calls (clone()) to implement the threads for our server.