Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 01:42:19 -0700 From: John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@efn.org> To: John Birrell <jb@cimlogic.com.au> Cc: dlombardo@excite.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: threads and Xlibs? Message-ID: <19990516014219.56752@hydrogen.nike.efn.org> In-Reply-To: <199905160758.RAA12380@cimlogic.com.au>; from John Birrell on Sun, May 16, 1999 at 05:58:51PM %2B1000 References: <19990516003125.15800@hydrogen.nike.efn.org> <199905160758.RAA12380@cimlogic.com.au>
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John Birrell scribbled this message on May 16: > John-Mark Gurney wrote: > > Dean Lombardo scribbled this message on May 16: > > > Why does X have multi-thread support disabled by default? > > > > > > Quite a few programs (e.g. freeamp) give nasty "Xlib: unexpected async > > > reply" errors due to making X calls from more than one thread. > > > > > > Now that threads and libc_r are part of the system (and have been for a > > > while), perhaps Xlibs should be built thread-safe? > > > > > > Has anyone trying compiling XFree86 with multi-thread support enabled? > > > > yeh, I did that a few months ago using the Xlib direct from the > > X Consortium, and it's a PITA... I can try updating the port, but there > > are SOO many hacks to the build environment, that it would probably be > > better for someone who actually knows the Xlib build environment to go > > over my patches... > > There is not much point. You only have one connection to the X server > per application context. Using more than one thread per fd leads to > confusion as to which thread is supposed to deal with incoming X events > and likely creates problems with thread safety in other areas of your > application. If you use more than one application context, you get > poor behaviour from menu widgets IMHO. > > It makes more sense to do (as I do) and do all Xlib calls in the initial > thread, with child threads to do anything else that can block. In general, > having more than one thread per thing that can block is a bad idea. yes, but this is what compiling Xlib with threading support is suppose to fix this so that you don't have problems... I haven't exactly looked at what the threading support DOES for Xlib though, but I did manage to make it so that XInitThreads() would return true, but I never did get around to making more exhaustive tests... hmmm... wonder why I don't have libX11.a and friends compiled, I know that I had it when I saved the work off... -- John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 541 684 8449 Cu Networking P.O. Box 5693, 97405 "The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall it. The event is only the actualizing of its thought." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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