Re: Help: multithreaded GNOME app

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik pobox com>]

On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Jason Tackaberry wrote:
> > Set up a pipe(), and pass one of the fds as an input source to Gtk+. 
> > Gtk+ will then call your callback function whenever data arrives over
> > the pipe. 

> That was my original thought, but I was wondering if there was a better
> approach to this.  Except, how do I allocate the file descriptors?  I'm
> assuming I can't just pick some arbitrary number > 2.


??  man pipe.  It allocates two descriptors for you, one read, and one
write.  If you want bi-directional communication, create two pipes.

I use pipes in all my multithreaded programs, mainly because select() is
the most convenient way to wait for an application event; and since Gtk+
provides a nice and easy-to-use event multiplexor system.

For speed, you only want to send read or write a single byte to the
pipe.  This is sufficient to wake up the process.  Do not use the pipe
to pass data larger than sizeof(void*) to the main process, doing so is
very wasteful. 

	Jeff