Re: Application suddenly stuck at startup

[Jonathan Ballet <jon multani info>]

Hi Simon,

On 03/02/2013 01:37 PM, Simon Feltman wrote:
> Hey,
>
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:54 AM, Jonathan Ballet <jon multani info
> <mailto:jon multani info>> wrote:
>
>           Re: Clarification of GTK/GDK locking pre GTK 4.0
>         http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.__comp.gnome.gtk+.general/24817/__focus=24834
>         <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.gtk+.general/24817/focus=24834>
>
>
>     Eh.
>     I've been reading the whole thread, as well as other threads on the
>     group, and I'm not sure the situation is clarified in my head... :-)
>     Some says Gdk.thread_* functions are deprecated and everything
>     touching Gtk should run in the main thread, some says GLib.idle_add
>     is running in the main thread and it's OK but maybe not...
>
>
> I think I was able to gain a some understanding from that discussion.
> What I got from it is the deprecation is only for
> gdk_threads_enter/leave, not threading functions in general. Instead of
> using enter/leave, use gdk_threads_add_* functions to queue up a
> callbacks that interact with GTK/GDK. Internally these just wrap your
> callback in enter/leave anyhow. And enter/leave won't go away until GTK
> 4, they will always remain functional for the lifetime of GTK 3.
>
> All of this seems somewhat irrelevant at least in the current state of
> the code base if you are writing a single threaded app. So unless you
> want to intact with GTK from a thread other than the main one, you never
> need to call gdk_threads_init. And if you don't call gdk_threads_init,
> gdk_threads_enter/leave are a no-op anyway and a lock is not even used.
...
> >   GLib.idle_add(gtk_entry.set_text, "foo bar")
>
> If GDK threading is enabled, I think it should be:
> Gdk.threads_add_idle(GLib.PRIORITY_DEFAULT, gtk_entry.set_text, "foo bar")

OK, so my plan will be to remove all the threads from the application, 
except one I think (which does background download of URLs - although 
I'm looking towards GIO to do this - it's not supposed to touch any Gtk 
related things, I'll double check anyway). There are interesting parts 
where the threads are not really required if Gtk is properly used.

Then, I should be able to remove the Gdk.threads_* related functions and 
hopefully to remove all the GLib.idle_add function calls described above 
(which should simplify the code).

Hopefully, I grasp the Gtk's threading model better now...

Thanks for your help!

 Jonathan