[lazarus] Endless loop problem I'm not sure how to trace

[Mattias Gaertner]

On 26 Oct 2002 21:02:43 -0500
Tony Maro <tony at maro.net> wrote:

> I don't THINK this is my code causing this.  Looks like something in
> the LCL.  But then again, I've been wrong before ;-)  I've exhausted
> everything I can think of to find this.
> 
> It just started with my latest build as of yesterday working off of
> Friday's CVS.  I have since done the CVS update for Lazarus 0.8.5 and
> the problem continues.
> 
> In CBTracker when clicking from Account to Bills to Cash Flow,
> sometimes things will hang and my CPU usage goes to 100%.  The
> interface does not update.
> 
> But, all I have to do is click anywhere in my desktop environment (on
> or off the application) and the endless loop stops.
> 
> It's odd because the button click event for the button finishes
> completely before the loop, and the paint event for my custom control
> (TCheckBookSchedule) never fires off, and nothing else on the form
> gets a paint either.  So it's between showing the controls on the form
> and the first paint message.  

The gtk interface sends paint messages not before all other messages are
sent. This is because other messages can create new paint messages and
paint messages are very expensive.
So, as long as something is generating messages, no paint message will
be sent to the application.
I did only some small tests and found some mem leaks and a double
canvas, which I fixed.
The bug did not yet appear with my tests. Perhaps it will only appear
with more cbtracker data. I will do more tests. 
Your description makes clear that one message creates the next in an
endless loop. Clicking outside the application creates mouse and focus
out messages. So we can start looking here.


> And it doesn't totally crash the program or
> anything - all you have to do is click the mouse anywhere - and it
> doesn't even have to be within the program - for it to unhang.
> 
> I'm doing a little trick to resize my scrollbar that when these
> buttons are clicked I resize the custom control.  I've confirmed that
> my WM_SIZE event is processed correctly, but it never goes on to
> trigger a WM_PAINT event for controls on the form.  Other than that,
> all these buttons do is hide and show controls.
> 
> In case you want them, sources with a built executable is at:
> 
> http://members.telocity.com/~tonymaro/cbbad.tgz
> 
> Note: It's intermittent - maybe one out of every 5-10 times you click
> between Bills and Cash Flow.  I've traced through all of the code of
> mine that I believe could be running at that point, which is all
> message handlers.  None of my code appears to be running when this
> happens.  It never seems to happen when you click TO the Account view
> though.  And it happens on both the bills and the cash flow views, so
> I know it's not related to the graph control I made, but the
> TCheckBookSchedule IS visible in both views.
> 
> Anyway, like I said I'm not POSITIVE it's not my code, especially
> considering that's the only two places it happens and both contain the
> TCheckBookSchedule control, but there's no handling I do that would be
> affected by a click anywhere else.  If I were generating an endless
> loop within my code, it wouldn't stop looping when the user clicked on
> the desktop.  That's why I'm guessing it's GTK+ related.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tony

I also added 'BeforeDestruction' to TForm.Destroy, which is a workaround
for the missing BeforeDestruction call of the 1.0.x compiler. This fixes
for example your mem leaks in cbtracker. So, you can now use heaptrc
without garbage.


Mattias