On 05 Apr 09, at 08:17, Michael Ash wrote:
On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Kirk Kerekes <kkere...@cox.net> wrote:
Along with threads and various asynchronous techniques already
mentioned,
you should also consider creating a separate UI-less "foundation
tool" to
perform your lengthy task, controlled with NSTask in your main app.
This
yields all of the benefits of a thread, with none of the threading
pitfalls.
Getting real-time feedback (for a progress indicator, for example)
from the
task is more complex than with a thread, and getting result data
back is
slightly more involved, but the absolute freedom from threading
issues is
often worth it.
Several of Apple's utility apps are constructed as a UI shell that
invokes
one or more tools.
I recommend avoiding this if possible. Processes are a somewhat scarce
resource on OS X (only 266 per user by default, looks like) and you
don't want to be using up more than you have to. It's unfortunate
because it can make things easier as you say.
It's also not particularly effective if your lengthy task involves any
significant processing of data that's been created within your
application. Most of Apple's utility apps that use helper tools (Disk
Utility, Network Utility, et al) don't need to pass anything beyond a
few parameters to their helper tools; if your application does,
though, trying to split out functionality to a separate executable may
make things worse rather than better.
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