[Lazarus] Threads

[Antonio Fortuny]

Le 23/03/2012 15:24, Michael Schnell a écrit :
> It's rather straight forward to do completely distinct threads.
>
> The tricky part starts, when the threads need to communicate (which 
> always is necessary) and thus share some data.
>
> Here you need to be aware of several things:
>
>  - the components and functions in the LCL and RTL usually are not 
> thread-save (and there is no documentation on in what way they are 
> "partly thread safe) e.g.
>  - - Many simple functions like IntToStr() seem to thread safe, but 
> this is not documented.
>  - - You can't use any function that accesses the GUI in another 
> thread but the main thread.
>  - - You can happily use multiple instances of TList in multiple 
> threads as long as each a single instance is not used by multiple 
> threads.
>  - - You can use the same instance of TList in multiple threads if you 
> use a TCtriticalSection (e.g. one for each instance of TList) do block 
> concurrent accesses.
>  - - AFAIK, the way TThreadList is used with multiple threads is 
> documented.
>
>  - To have a worker thread communicate with the main thread (i.e. to 
> have it use the GUI in any way) you can use TThread.Synchronize. 
> Downside: The thread waits until any scheduled main thread activity is 
> done before entering the synchronized code (might last forever). It 
> only goes on working when the synchronized code is done.
>
>  - To trigger a main thread activity without having to wait for the 
> main thread you can use Application.QueueAsnycCall.
>
>  - The functionality of TThread.Synchronize and 
> Application.QueuAsyncCall is not available in all Widget Types (see 
> Compile-Options -> Build Modes). It is verified to work decently in 
> GTK and Win32 (and supposedly QT, but I did not check this myself).
All those are the basics that I apply since I'm busy writing threads 
code. I already make use of Critical sections and events lock some 
external resources (log files for instance) and I avoid to have any 
thread code using any kind of GUI. All thread code I write, is contained 
in OS services or very specialized programs having no GUI at all.

Anyway, thanks for precisions.

Antonio.

> -Michael
>
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