Re: Do I have to use thread safety if my GDK layer uses threads?

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

"Brian J. Murrell" <gtk-list-in interlinx bc ca> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I am writing a GTK+ 2.0 application using the DirectFB GDK layer.
> DirectFB is multi-threaded (the GTK program itself runs in the initial
> thread).  Does that mean that I need to write my GTK+ application in a
> "thread safe" manner?

Shouldn't need to .... as long as you only access GTK+ and GDK functions
from one thread. (Assum DirectFB doesn't do anything unexpected.)
 
> The reason I ask is that I came across a problem with my application.
> At the start of my application I call:
>
>   gtk_init (&argc, &argv);
>
> and gtk_init() does a "bindtextdomain()" and my application is
> getting suspended at gtk's call to "bindtextdomain()" with:
>
> 3346  rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, NULL, [RTMIN], 8) = 0
> 3346  rt_sigsuspend([] <unfinished ...>
>
> I am assuming that this is an issue with threading and non-safe use of
> data and tried getting rid of the bindtextdomain() call in gtk's
> gtk_init() function and everything seemed to work fine again.
>
> I am at a loss to figure out what the unsafe data access is however
> and how to guard it.

This doesn't look GTK+ related at all ... bindtextdomain() is 
part of the 'libintl' library or the C library. The version
in the GNU C library should definitely be thread safe, don't
know about other versions.

Regards,
                                        Owen