Re: ORBit2 versus hanging method calls

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Joe,

On 12 Oct 2001, Joe Shaw wrote:
> On Thu, 2001-10-11 at 22:10, Michael Meeks wrote:
> >         Thirdly - there is builtin ASync support in ORBit2 - a bit
> > like bonobo-async, but using the infastructure inside ORBit2 [
> > that superceeds bonobo-async by an order of intelligence ], so -
> > it should be possible to make nice async methods for things that
> > might take a long time, and invoke a standard CORBA method
> > asynchronously without any fooling around in the IDL.
>
> Cool!  How does one utilize this functionality?

	Ah; wait - let me just commit. So, there is an example (
regression test ) in ORBit2/test/everything/client.c search for Async.
Essentialy however you just need this:

typedef struct _ORBitAsyncQueueEntry ORBitAsyncQueueEntry;

typedef void (*ORBitAsyncInvokeFunc) (CORBA_Object          object,
				      ORBit_IMethod        *m_data,
				      ORBitAsyncQueueEntry *aqe,
				      gpointer              user_data,
				      CORBA_Environment    *ev);

/* Various bits for Async work */
void ORBit_small_invoke_async        (CORBA_Object           obj,
				      ORBit_IMethod         *m_data,
				      ORBitAsyncInvokeFunc   fn,
				      gpointer               user_data,
				      gpointer              *args,
				      CORBA_Context          ctx,
				      CORBA_Environment     *ev);

void ORBit_small_demarshal_async     (ORBitAsyncQueueEntry  *aqe,
				      gpointer               ret,
				      gpointer              *args,
				      CORBA_Environment     *ev);


	so you do something like ORBit_small_invoke_async (cb), and
inside the cb you do ORBit_small_demarshal_async (queue_entry), and
that's about it really.

	Of course - it would be quite easy to write IDL compiler
support for async stubs / skels; all that really needs doing is to sit
down and spec. up the ABI, I don't believe the OMG helps us there.

	The 'gpointer *args' is a standardly normalized array of
argument indirectors - as defined in
ORBit2/docs/internals/interface-indirection.gnumeric.

	HTH,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot