Re: Gtk, Python, and Threading.

[John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com>]

On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 17:58 -0700, Robert Park wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:21 PM, John Stowers
> <john stowers lists gmail com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 09:28 +0100, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> >> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 19:56, Robert Park <rbpark exolucere ca> wrote:
> >> > I. Give. Up.
> >>
> >> I try to avoid threads at all in my python programs.
> >
> > I never have any trouble on Linux when mixing threading and pygtk. Are
> > you seeing these problems using pygtk or PyGObject+introspection?
> 
> Introspection.
> 
> > [1] I typically use the gobject.idle_add(gobject.emit, "foo", bar, baz)
> > idiom to communicate from threading.Thread derived objects back to the
> > UI. On windows things also work well providing one enters/leaves before
> > running the main loop.
> >
> > I don't bother with the threads_enter and threads_leave approach.
> 
> Yeah, I tried it both ways, and both produced identical results. The
> thread was successfully able to execute in the background and
> manipulate the liststore data while keeping the UI interactive for the
> user, except that the entire thread somehow blocked, and required the
> user to 'tickle' the interface with mouse clicks in order to progress
> the execution of the thread. I even gutted the threading method to be
> nothing but print statements and I still experienced this behavior.
> 
> As a relative noob to both gtk and threading, I'm not really sure
> what's going on, but seemed to me as though the threading.Thread
> object was somehow executing synchronously with the GTK main loop,
> which just idles until you interact with it.

Sounds similar to the problems I encountered when the first static GIO
bindings were released - the GIL was not being released when calling
into native code (where appropriate)

John