Cross-process read-write synchronization primative in .NET?

Question

Is there a read/write locking mechanism that works across processes (similar to Mutex, but read/write instead exclusive locking)? I would like to allow concurrent read access,

Answer 1

I've created this class based on Pavel's answer. I haven't tested it extensively yet, but I've created a simple winforms application to test it and so far it works well.

Please note, that it uses a semaphore, so it doesn't support reentrancy.

public class CrossProcessReaderWriterLock
{
    private readonly string _name;
    const int _maxReaders = 10;

    readonly Mutex     _mutex;
    readonly Semaphore _semaphore;

    public CrossProcessReaderWriterLock(string name)
    {
        _name = name;
        _mutex     = new Mutex(false, name + ".Mutex");
        _semaphore = new Semaphore(_maxReaders, _maxReaders, name + ".Semaphore");
    }

    public void AcquireReaderLock()
    {
        //Log.Info($"{_name} acquiring reader lock...");

        _mutex    .WaitOne();
        _semaphore.WaitOne();
        _mutex    .ReleaseMutex();

        //Log.Info($"{_name} reader lock acquired.");
    }

    public void ReleaseReaderLock()
    {
        _semaphore.Release();

        //Log.Info($"{_name} reader lock released.");
    }

    public void AcquireWriterLock()
    {
        //Log.Info($"{_name} acquiring writer lock...");

        _mutex.WaitOne();

        for (int i = 0; i < _maxReaders; i++)
            _semaphore.WaitOne(); // drain out all readers-in-progress

        _mutex.ReleaseMutex();

        //Log.Info($"{_name} writer lock acquired.");
    }

    public void ReleaseWriterLock()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < _maxReaders; i++)
            _semaphore.Release();

        //Log.Info($"{_name} writer lock released.");
    }
}