std.concurrency thread communication problem

[Charles Hixson via Digitalmars-d-learn]

I'm building a program which I intend to have many threads that can each send 
messages to (and receive messages from) each other.  The obvious way to do 
this would be to have a shared array of Tids, but this seems to not work.  I'm 
continually fighting the system to get it to compile, and this makes me think 
it should probably be done some other way...but what?

One possibility is to have each thread maintain a separate array that contains 
all the threads, which would mean that they would need to be initialized after 
they were created.  This would avoid the problems of shared Tids, but each Tid 
contains a private mailbox, so this would be being duplicated, and that 
bothers me...it seems like a poor idea.  (Maybe I'm wrong about that...but I 
don't know.)

I do know that I want a n by n communication matrix (leaving out the main 
thread), with each thread sending messages to all to others.  (Well, except 
for a few that I haven't really defined yet, but which handle separated 
functions.)  My plan was to have each thread run an execution loop which 
frequently checked for messages received in between performing its own 
functions.  They are not intended to synchronize with each other.  They are 
not intended to be temporary, i.e., each of these threads would be started 
shortly after program initialization, and continue running until program 
termination.  But how should I get them to know each other's address?

I don't want the main thread to need to act as a switchboard between all the 
others, though I guess that would "sort of" work.  (Actually, if I need to do 
that, that job would be pulled off into yet another thread...and I end up with 
more threads than processors.  Still, that's a design that is possible, IIUC.)

Any comments or suggestions?