Re: thread safe gtk?

[Rob Browning <rlb cs utexas edu>]

Owen Taylor <otaylor@gtk.org> writes:

> I just fooled around with a bit and created something like this:
> 
>   ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/users/otaylor/gtkthreads-0.1.tar.gz
> 
> (Calling it just gtkthreads is pretty presumptious, considering
> how little I know about threading). It seems to work reasonably
> reliably in limited testing.

I've got this, and I have some comments which I'll post in a moment...
 
> The best long term approach is most likely to modify GTK to 
> optionally do:
> 
> #ifdef GTK_USE_PTHREADS
>   gtk_mutex_unlock (&gtk_mutex);
> #endif
>   select (...)
> #ifdef GTK_USE_PTHREADS
>   gtk_mutex_lock (&gtk_mutex);
> #endif
> 
> Which allows other threads to get the GTK lock without having
> to communicate with the main thread.

It would be nice if this could be run-time rather than compile-time
configurable.  Something like:

  if(gtk_using_threads()) gtk_mutex_unlock (&gtk_mutex);

  select (...)

  if(gtk_using_threads()) gtk_mutex_lock (&gtk_mutex);
  
(gtk_using_threads() could just be a macro referring to a global for
now.  Using the macro means we have more flexibility later.  The
overhead for run-time testing (basically this "if" test) should be
undetectable.)

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>
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