I know that there are several methods of inter-process communication (ipc), like:
However I was unable to find a list or a paper comparing these mechanism to each other and pointing out the benefits of them in different environemnts.
E.g I know that if I use a file which gets written by process A and process B reads it out it will work on any OS and is pretty robust, on the other hand - why shouldn't I use TCP Socket ? Has anyone a kind of overview in which cases which methods are the most suitable ?
Long story short:
Use lock files, mutexes, semaphores and barriers when processes compete for a scarce resource. They operate in a similar manner: several process try to acquire a synchronisation primitive, some of them acquire it, others are put in sleeping state until the primitive is available again. Use semaphores to limit the amount of processes working with a resource. Use a mutex to limit the amount to 1.
You can partially avoid using synchronisation primitives by using non-blocking thread-safe data structures.
Use signals, queues, pipes, events, messages, unix sockets when processes need to exchange data. Signals and events are usually used for notifying a process of something (for instance, ctrl+c in unix terminal sends a SIGINT signal to a process). Pipes, shared memory and unix sockets are for transmitting data.
Use sockets for networking (or, speaking formally, for exchanging data between processes located on different machines).
Long story long: take a look at Modern Operating Systems book by Tanenbaum & Bos, namely IPC chapter. The topic is vast and can't be completely covered within a list or a paper.