[windows] mingw-w64 threads: posix vs win32

I'm installing mingw-w64 on Windows and there are two options: win32 threads and posix threads. I know what is the difference between win32 threads and pthreads but I don't understand what is the difference between these two options. I doubt that if I will choose posix threads it will prevent me from calling WinAPI functions like CreateThread.

It seems that this option specify which threading API will be used by some program or library, but by what? By GCC, libstdc++ or by something else?

I found this: Whats the difference between thread_posixs and thread_win32 in gcc port of windows?

In short, for this version of mingw, the threads-posix release will use the posix API and allow the use of std::thread, and the threads-win32 will use the win32 API, and disable the std::thread part of the standard.

Ok, if I will select win32 threads then std::thread will be unavailable but win32 threads will still be used. But used by what?

Note that it is now possible to use some of C++11 std::thread in the win32 threading mode. These header-only adapters worked out of the box for me: https://github.com/meganz/mingw-std-threads

From the revision history it looks like there is some recent attempt to make this a part of the mingw64 runtime.

Parts of the GCC runtime (the exception handling, in particular) are dependent on the threading model being used. So, if you're using the version of the runtime that was built with POSIX threads, but decide to create threads in your own code with the Win32 APIs, you're likely to have problems at some point.

Even if you're using the Win32 threading version of the runtime you probably shouldn't be calling the Win32 APIs directly. Quoting from the MinGW FAQ:

As MinGW uses the standard Microsoft C runtime library which comes with Windows, you should be careful and use the correct function to generate a new thread. In particular, the CreateThread function will not setup the stack correctly for the C runtime library. You should use _beginthreadex instead, which is (almost) completely compatible with CreateThread.