FWIW I'm working on something with a similar need. I don't know threads so well and am not sure how well they are implemented on different platforms. I've been looking to choose between POE which apparently can lock up if you get a bug, and other processes forked from it. The root process (which may or may not be a POE app) would hold data shared between children and chase down zombies. I don't know how well garbage collection will work not having used POE before. Is this what's on your mind?