Re: Long running nautilus extensions

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 20:08 +0000, Lorenzo E. Danielsson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, so if I should be asking
> this somewhere else could somebody please direct me.
> 
> I'm writing an extension using the Python Nautilus extension that
> converts Mp3 files to Ogg. I create a thread for each file to be
> converted. While the threads are running I keep the main thread alive
> by:
> 
> while threading.activeCount() > 1:
> 	time.sleep(3)
> 
> The problem is that this causes Nautilus to freeze until the selected
> files have all been converted. I understand this is because I'm running
> the extension in the main loop of Nautilus (correct me if I'm wrong). Is
> there any way to work around this? How do I allow for an extension to
> run for an extended period of time without blocking Nautilus itself. Is
> there any call I can make within the loop that will allow Nautilus to do
> its own processing and then return?

Nautilus extensions run in the main nautilus thread, and they may
*never* block. Not even to do simple IO. All IO needs to be
asynchronous.

I'm not sure why you need to "keep the main thread alive". I thought the
idea of using threads for the conversion was to not affect the main
thread/loop? Is this because the threads need to have the python
interpreter run on the main thread or something?

Maybe a better solution would be to spawn new processes instead of
threads.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an obese native American matador with a robot buddy named Sparky. She's 
an enchanted green-skinned femme fatale on her way to prison for a murder she 
didn't commit. They fight crime!