interacting with a CMutex without MFC

Question

We have multiple MFC apps, which use CMutex( false, "blah" ), where "blah" allows the mutex to work across process boundaries.

One of these apps was re-written without MFC (using Qt instead). How can I simulate the CMutex using Win32 calls? (Qt's QMutex is not inter-process.) I prefer not to modify the MFC apps.

Answer 1

The following funcs will probably be what you want, they are all documented on MSDN.

CreateMutex(...)
WaitForSingleObject(...)
ReleaseMutex(...)

Answer 2

For inter-process mutexes you want these calls:

CreateMutex

WaitForSingleObject

ReleaseMutex

CloseHandle

These are the underlying Win32 API calls that CMutex is a wrapper around.

For in-process only mutexes you can also use these calls, which are faster:

InitializeCriticalSection

EnterCriticalSection

LeaveCriticalSection

DeleteCriticalSection