running main thread frm another thread - gtk

I have run a secondary thread which some operations are carried on. Then while executing in secondary thread i want to call some operations on main thread. Can any one have sample code for it. I could not find it from google.
Here is my sample call:
Glib::thread_init();
Glib::Thread *const myThread = Glib::Thread::create(sigc::mem_fun(*this, &MyClass::MyFunction), true);
myThread->join();
MyClass::MyFunction()
{
//here i want to call the function from main thread
AnotherFunction();
}
MyClass::AnotherFunction()
{
}

Related

Will an item submitted to the main `DispatchQueue` ever interrupt currently executing code on the main thread?

The below code is used to execute a long running calculation on a background thread:
enum CalculationInterface {
private static var latestKey: AnyObject? // Used to cancel previous calculations when a new one is initiated.
static func output(from input: Input, return: #escaping (Output?) -> ()) {
self.latestKey = EmptyObject()
let key = self.latestKey! // Made to enable capturing `self.latestKey's` value.
DispatchQueue.global().async {
do {
let output = try calculateOutput(from: input, shouldContinue: { key === self.latestKey }) // Function cancels by throwing an error.
DispatchQueue.main.async { if (key === self.latestKey) { `return`(output) } }
} catch {}
}
}
}
This function is called from the main thread like so:
/// Initiates calculation of the output and sets it to the result when finished.
private func recalculateOutput() {
self.output = .calculating // Triggers calculation in-progress animation for user.
CalculationInterface.output(from: input) { self.output = $0 } // Ends animation once set and displays calculated output to user.
}
I'm wondering if it's possible for the closure that's pushed to DispatchQueue.main to execute while the main thread is running my code. Or in other words execute after self.output = .calculating but before self.latestKey is re-set to the new object. If it could, then the stale calculation output could be displayed to the user.
I'm wondering if it's possible for the closure that's pushed to DispatchQueue.main to execute while the main thread is running my code
No, it isn't possible. The main queue is a serial queue. If code is running on the main queue, no "other" main queue code can run. Your DispatchQueue.main.async effectively means: "Wait until all code running on the main queue comes naturally to an end, and then run this on the main queue."
On the other hand, DispatchQueue.global() is not a serial queue. Thus it is theoretically possible for two calls to calculateOutput to overlap. That isn't something you want to have happen; you want to be sure that any executing instance of calculateOutput finishes (and we proceed to grapple with the latestKey) before another one can start. In other words, you want to ensure that the sequence
set latestKey on the main thread
perform calculateOutput in the background
look at latestKey on the main thread
happens coherently. The way to ensure that is to set aside a DispatchQueue that you create with DispatchQueue(label:), that you will always use for running calculateOutput. That queue will be a serial queue by default.

Memory Leak using Windows ThreadPool API

I am using Windows ThreadPools in my application, and am experiencing a memory leak of 136 bytes for every call to CreateThreadPoolWork(), as seen via UMDH:
+ 1257728 ( 1286424 - 28696) 9459 allocs BackTraceB0035CC
+ 9248 ( 9459 - 211) BackTraceB0035CC allocations
ntdll!RtlUlonglongByteSwap+B52
ntdll!TpAllocWork+8D
KERNEL32!CreateThreadpoolWork+25
... My Code ...
I am using Cleanup Group, so per the documentation I am not calling CloseThreadPoolWork().
My code for handling the ThreadPool is:
typedef PTP_WORK ThreadHandle_t;
typedef PTP_WORK_CALLBACK THREAD_ENTRY_POINT_T;
static PTP_POOL pool = NULL;
static TP_CALLBACK_ENVIRON CallBackEnviron;
static PTP_CLEANUP_GROUP cleanupgroup = NULL;
int mtInitialize()
{
InitializeThreadpoolEnvironment(&CallBackEnviron);
pool = CreateThreadpool(NULL);
if (NULL == pool)
{
return -1;
}
cleanupgroup = CreateThreadpoolCleanupGroup();
if (NULL == cleanupgroup)
{
return -1;
}
SetThreadpoolCallbackPool(&CallBackEnviron, pool);
SetThreadpoolCallbackCleanupGroup(&CallBackEnviron, cleanupgroup, NULL);
return 0; // Success
}
void mtDestroy()
{
CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroupMembers(cleanupgroup, FALSE, NULL);
CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroup(cleanupgroup);
DestroyThreadpoolEnvironment(&CallBackEnviron);
CloseThreadpool(pool);
}
//Create thread
ThreadHandle_t mtRunThread(THREAD_ENTRY_POINT_T entry_point, void *thread_args)
{
PTP_WORK work = NULL;
work = CreateThreadpoolWork(entry_point, thread_args, &CallBackEnviron);
if (NULL == work) {
// CreateThreadpoolWork() failed.
return 0;
}
SubmitThreadpoolWork(work);
return work;
}
//Wait for a thread to finish
void mtWaitForThread(ThreadHandle_t thread)
{
WaitForThreadpoolWorkCallbacks(thread, FALSE);
}
Am I doing something wrong?
Any ideas why I'm leaking memory?
I'm guessing you figured it out, given your comment, but the problem is that you only call CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroupMembers() in mtDestroy().
If you have a persistent thread pool the memory will not be freed unless you call CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroupMembers() periodically. Your code and comments suggests that you do, though I can't confirm this without the code responsible for creating and destroying your thread pool.
My recommendation for persistent thread pools is to just call CloseThreadpoolWork() in the callback functions. Microsoft's recommendations work better if you're creating and destroying thread pools, but CloseThreadpoolWork() is simpler and easier than periodically calling CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroupMembers() if you're maintaining one thread pool for the life of your application.
By the way, it's safe to do both as long as you tell CloseThreadpoolCleanupGroupMembers() to cancel any pending callbacks (pass fCancelPendingCallbacks as TRUE) to ensure CloseThreadpoolWork() is called on any cleaned up work items:
You can revoke the work object’s membership only by closing it, which
can be done on an individual basis with the CloseThreadpoolWork
function. The thread pool knows that the work object is a member of
the cleanup group and revokes its membership before closing it. This
ensures that the application doesn’t crash when the cleanup group
later attempts to close all of its members. The inverse isn’t true: If
you first instruct the cleanup group to close all of its members and
then call CloseThreadpoolWork on the now invalid work object, your
application will crash.
From Windows with C++ - Thread Pool Cancellation and Cleanup

Powershell Custom Cmdlet - Call WriteObject in Background Thread

Calling the WriteObject Method from a background thread is not possible!
Is there a possibility, to invoke/dispatch this method in the main thread of the powershell (like in WPF)?
Code sample:
protected override void ProcessRecord()
{
base.ProcessRecord();
...
Service.StartReading(filter, list => { WriteObject(list, true); } );
}
EDIT:
Any solution, workaround or quick fix?
thx,
Mathias
I found a solution, which solves my problem.
created a ConcurrentQueue
ConcurrentQueue<LogEntryInfoBase> logEntryQueue =
new ConcurrentQueue<LogEntryInfoBase>();
start a background thread to enqueue items to the ConcurrentQueue
Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Service.StartReading(
filter, EnqueueLogEntryInfoBases));
meanwhile, try to dequeue from this queue in the main thread
for ( ; ; )
{
LogEntryInfoBase logEntry = null;
logEntryQueue.TryDequeue(out logEntry);
if (logEntry != null)
{
WriteObject(logEntry);
}
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
From my point of view, this solution/fix is ugly, but it works for my current issue.
I was stuck on pretty much the same issue. In my opinion we can improve the solution by adding a sleep in the infinite loop. Of course we will need to have a global reference to our main thread and the background thread will need to call interrupt as soon as an item is added in queue.

Thread Join method

class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
ParameterizedThreadStart aStart = new ParameterizedThreadStart(Addition);
Thread aThread = new Thread(aStart);
Data aData = new Data();
aData.X = 10;
aData.Y = 20;
aThread.Start(aData);
aThread.Join();
Console.WriteLine("End of the program");
}
static void Addition(object data)
{
var a = data as Data;
var b = a.X + a.Y;
a.result = b;
Console.WriteLine(a.result);
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Console.WriteLine("End of thread");
}
}
I have written an example to understand the Join method();
Can any body explain how it works ? and what is the difference between sleep and join()
Thread.Sleep
Blocks the current thread for the specified number of milliseconds.
-Thread.Join
Blocks the calling thread until a thread terminates (you don't know for how long)
Note that the Thread.Join() method only blocks the calling thread (usually the application's main thread of execution) until your thread object completes. You can still have other threads executing in the background while waiting for your specific Thread to finish executing.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.thread.join.aspx
Join waits until the thread you've called it on stops. Sleep sleeps for a given time period.
It causes the currently running thread to stop execution till the time the thread it joins with stop execution.i.e joins method waits for a thread to die.

iphone - how do I make a thread runs faster

I have two methods that I need to run, lets call them metA and metB.
When I start coding this app, I called both methods without using threads, but the app started freezing, so I decided to go with threads.
metA and metB are called by touch events, so they can occur any time in any order. They don't depend on each other.
My problem is the time it takes to either threads start running. There's a lag between the time the thread is created with
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:#selector(.... bla bla
and the time the thread starts running.
I suppose this time is related to the amount of time required by iOS to create the thread itself. How can I speed this? If I pre create both threads, how do I make them just do their stuff when needed and never terminate? I mean, a kind of sleeping thread that is always alive and works when asked and sleeps after that?
thanks.
If you want to avoid the expensive startup time of creating new threads, create both threads at startup as you suggested. To have them only run when needed, you can have them wait on a condition variable. Since you're using the NSThread class for threading, I'd recommend using the NSCondition class for condition variables (an alternative would be to use the POSIX threading (pthread) condition variables, pthread_cond_t).
One thing you'll have to be careful of is if you get another touch event while the thread is still running. In that case, I'd recommend using a queue to keep track of work items, and then the touch event handler can just add the work item to the queue, and the worker thread can process them as long as the queue is not empty.
Here's one way to do this:
typedef struct WorkItem
{
// information about the work item
...
struct WorkItem *next; // linked list of work items
} WorkItem;
WorkItem *workQueue = NULL; // head of linked list of work items
WorkItem *workQueueTail = NULL; // tail of linked list of work items
NSCondition *workCondition = NULL; // condition variable for the queue
...
-(id) init
{
if((self = [super init]))
{
// Make sure this gets initialized before the worker thread starts
// running
workCondition = [[NSCondition alloc] init];
// Start the worker thread
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:#selector(threadProc:)
toTarget:self withObject:nil];
}
return self;
}
// Suppose this function gets called whenever we receive an appropriate touch
// event
-(void) onTouch
{
// Construct a new work item. Note that this must be allocated on the
// heap (*not* the stack) so that it doesn't get destroyed before the
// worker thread has a chance to work on it.
WorkItem *workItem = (WorkItem *)malloc(sizeof(WorkItem));
// fill out the relevant info about the work that needs to get done here
...
workItem->next = NULL;
// Lock the mutex & add the work item to the tail of the queue (we
// maintain that the following invariant is always true:
// (workQueueTail == NULL || workQueueTail->next == NULL)
[workCondition lock];
if(workQueueTail != NULL)
workQueueTail->next = workItem;
else
workQueue = workItem;
workQueueTail = workItem;
[workCondition unlock];
// Finally, signal the condition variable to wake up the worker thread
[workCondition signal];
}
-(void) threadProc:(id)arg
{
// Loop & wait for work to arrive. Note that the condition variable must
// be locked before it can be waited on. You may also want to add
// another variable that gets checked every iteration so this thread can
// exit gracefully if need be.
while(1)
{
[workCondition lock];
while(workQueue == NULL)
{
[workCondition wait];
// The work queue should have something in it, but there are rare
// edge cases that can cause spurious signals. So double-check
// that it's not empty.
}
// Dequeue the work item & unlock the mutex so we don't block the
// main thread more than we have to
WorkItem *workItem = workQueue;
workQueue = workQueue->next;
if(workQueue == NULL)
workQueueTail = NULL;
[workCondition unlock];
// Process the work item here
...
free(workItem); // don't leak memory
}
}
If you can target iOS4 and higher, consider using blocks with Grand Central Dispatch asynch queue, which operates on background threads which the queue manages... or for backwards compatibility, as mentioned use NSOperations inside an NSOperation queue to have bits of work performed for you in the background. You can specify exactly how many background threads you want to support with an NSOperationQueue if both operations have to run at the same time.