Re: Proper way to provide gtk+ app with asynchronous data?

[Christer Palm <palm nogui se>]

Paul Davis wrote:
> just be sure to be aware that this is not a good design if the
> data-sending thread is under hard or soft real-time constraints. you
> should never force synchronization between the GUI and a real-time
> thread, because it can cause the RT thread to block for an unbounded
> period. use lock-free techniques (such as single-reader/single-writer
> ringbuffers) and/or pipes.
Additionally, you 1) will need some mechanism to make sure that things 
doesn't go bananas if the receiver can't keep up with long-term average 
data bandwidth, so it's not as easy as just putting a buffer in between, 
and 2) you have a data "ownership" problem where thread A passes 
ownership of the data it produces to thread B, which can easily cause 
memory leaks if you're not careful.
Bottom line beeing that if you're _not_ having any realtime constraints, 
it could vice-versa be a good design decision to avoid asynchronous 
mechanisms, because they add unnecessary complexity.
--
Christer Palm