Re: GEvent - Proposal for a new threading structure for GLib

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

Olexiy Avramchenko wrote:

> On 11/17/06, Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com> wrote:
> ...
>  
>
> > I've attached a patch that implements and documents GEvent.  It closely
> > mimics the Python class, so I won't bother describing the API here.
> >    
>
> Is GCond not suitable for this purpose?
>  
Yes it is, never the less I have to agree (as someone finding themselves
repeatedly rewriting the same code segments for that purpose) that it is 
not an
ideal api for message passing/handling.

One should be able to do something like:
 g_message_send (destination[null for broadcast], "messagename", 
msg_size, msg_data);

so that a message handler in another thread recieves the message for 
"messagename",
or a little more high-tech but also usefull would be:
 g_message_sync_call (destination[null for an implicit call], 
"messagename",
                                       msg_size, msg_data,
                                       timeout, &retsize, &retdata);
that would ensure that the thread that handled the message did so inside 
"timeout"
milisecs, and to retrieve the return value from the thread that honored 
the message.

The problem I think is that writing up a simplified "only gonna work 
with gthread"
messaging system might just be neglecting the need for a real IPC, that 
would have
the same kind of friendly apis we all need (I'm not reading those 
threads closely but isnt
that what all the dbus rage is all about ?)... I guess ideally it should 
also work
"distributed", a vague buzzword, I mean that g_message_send() should not 
nescisarily be
restricted to processes running on the same host (there should be 
connections to a domain
etc).

Well my 2 cents was a little vague and rattled but the point remains, 
the apis
I mentioned were also strictly a figure of speach to demonstrate the 
type of functionality
ultimately needed for messaging across threads/processes/hosts.

Cheers,
                          -Tristan