Re: watching a file descriptor in gtk3

[rbd <rbd soest hawaii edu>]

Hi Emmanuele,

Thanks for the additional documentation references! They were generally 
informative, although I think the one you mentioned as being apropos of my 
particular case was actually designed to be used for a source specifically 
other than file descriptors -- it was useful nonetheless, however.

Roger


On Mon, 23 Jan 2017, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:

> Hi;
>
> On 23 January 2017 at 22:09, rbd <rbd soest hawaii edu> wrote:
>
> > > It is not quite that bad.  The documentation for g_source_add_unix_fd()
> > > is inadequate, but although not immediately obvious the prepare, check
> > > and finalize handlers can in fact usually just be set to NULL (provided
> > > you have set the 'events' argument for g_source_add_unix_fd()
> > > correctly) so you only need to provide the dispatch handler, which
> > > executes your callback when an event occurs.
> > >
> > > The poor quality of the documentation is the real problem here.  I
> > > would give it a try and see how you get on with it.
> >
> >
> > Nothing about the g_source_* functions is obvious from the official docs,
> > either immediately or otherwise! ;-> Seriously, one of the least illuminated
> > points there actually has to do with timeouts, exactly where in the
> > check->prepare->dispatch sequence the poll() gets done, etc.
>
> Of course, patches and bugs for the documentation are welcome.
>
> A good set of articles on GSource and the main context API in GLib is
> on Philip Withnall's blog; Philip actually contributed back that
> documentation in the API reference, but this kind of discussions on
> how the implementation works is ill-suited for an API documentation.
>
> See:
>
>  - https://tecnocode.co.uk/2014/03/27/what-is-gmaincontext/
>  - https://tecnocode.co.uk/2015/05/05/a-detailed-look-at-gsource/
>  - https://tecnocode.co.uk/2014/04/19/ensuring-functions-are-called-in-the-right-context/
>
> The second article also covers your use case pretty accurately.
>
> Ciao,
> Emmanuele.
>
> --
> https://www.bassi.io
> [@] ebassi [@gmail.com]