Hi, I'm having trouble understanding the way gtk/gdk locking works in a multi-threaded application. According to GTK documentation, to make gtk calls thread-safe I have to initialize both the GLib and GDK thread subsytems and enclose the gtk_main() statement in a gdk_threads_enter()/gdk_threads_leave() pair. Then any calls, including signal handlers will be thread safe. On the other hand, if I had another thread trying to perform GTK/GDK calls, I need to enclose them in a gdk_threads_enter()/gdk_threads_leave() pair.
Question 1a: Does this mean, that a gtk_main() loop, that has been started in a thread-safe manner within a gdk_threads_enter()/gdk_threads_leave() pair, actually releases the GDK lock so that other threads may acquire it and perform GTK/GDK calls? Question 1b: If so, then how can I make it so, that the GTK main loop would first perform all the drawing and release the GTK/GDK lock and only then start entering signal handlers? Or maybe I could have two threads: one performing the drawing and the other servicing all the callbacks and handlers? If so, then if I have two threads, one of which contains the GTK main loop, and an expose-event handler, and the other has some means to generate data for the expose-handler to use, then, I need to acquire a GMutex lock in both threads: when I'm writing new data in the generator-thread, and when I'm reading data while drawing in the expose-event handler thread. Now If i were to use any GTK/GDK calls in the generator thread, and would try to acquire a lock using gdk_threads_enter, the program would enter a deadlock: the main thread, still having a GTK/GDK lock would enter the expose-event handler and wait for a lock on the Data, while the generator thread would wait for a lock on GTK/GDK while still having a lock on the Data. Question 2: How should I design my thread, so that I could have MULTIPLE threads locking the GTK/GDK subsystems using gdk_threads_enter() and locking some arbitrary data using mutexes and not enter a deadlock? I feel that I'm not making my self clear, but if the term `heisenbugs` is used to for multi-threading related bugs, then `heisenquestions` are definitely the nonsense above... Any ideas would be most appreciated. solar _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
