is std::queue thread safe with producer and multiple consumers

Question

how can I make a queue thread safe? I need to push / pop / front / back and clear. is there something similar in boost?

I have one producer and one or more consumer.

Answer 1

std::queue is not thread safe if one or more threads are writing. And its interface is not conducive to a thread safe implementation, because it has separate methods such as pop(), size() and empty() which would have to be synchronized externally.

A common approach^* is to implement a queue type with a simpler interface, and use locking mechanisms internally to provide synchronization.

^{* A search for "concurrent queue C++" should yield many results. I implemented a very simple toy one here, where the limitation was to use only standard C++. See also Anthony Williams' book C++ concurrency in action, as well as his blog.}