I have an asynchronous dataflow system written in C++. In dataflow architecture, the application is a set of component instances, which are initialized at startup, then they communicate each other with pre-defined messages. There is a component type called Pulsar, which provides "clock signal message" to other components which connect to one it (e.g. Delay). It fires message (calls the dataflow dispatcher API) every X ms, where X is the value of the "frequency" parameter, which is given in ms.
Short, the task is just to call a function (method) in every X ms. The question is: what's the best/official way to do it? Is there any pattern for it?
There are some methods I found:
Maybe, the best answer is a short commented part of an audio/video player's source code (which I can't find/understand by myself).
UPDATE (requested by @MSalters): The co-author of the DF project is using Mac OSX, so we should find a solution that works on most Posix-compilant op. systems, not only on Linux. Maybe, in the future there'll be a target device which uses BSD, or some restricted Linux.
To be honest, I think having to have a "pulsar" in what claims to be an asynchronous dataflow system is a design flaw. Either it is asynchronous or it has a synchronizing clock event.
If you have a component that needs a delay, have it request one, through boost::asio::deadline_timer.async_wait or any of the lower level solutions (select() / epoll() / timer_create() / etc). Either way, the most effective C++ solution is probably the boost.asio timers, since they would be using whatever is most efficient on your linux kernel version.