docs/doxygen/overviews/thread.h

   1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   2 // Name:        thread.h
   3 // Purpose:     topic overview
   4 // Author:      wxWidgets team
   5 // RCS-ID:      $Id$
   6 // Licence:     wxWindows licence
   7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   8
   9 /*
  10     NOTE: we explicitly don't name wxMutexGUIEnter() and wxMutexGUILeave()
  11           as they're not safe. See also ticket #10366.
  12 */
  13
  14 /**
  15
  16 @page overview_thread Multithreading Overview
  17
  18 @tableofcontents
  19
  20 wxWidgets provides a complete set of classes encapsulating objects necessary in
  21 multi-threaded (MT) applications: the wxThread class itself and different
  22 synchronization objects: mutexes (see wxMutex) and critical sections (see
  23 wxCriticalSection) with conditions (see wxCondition). The thread API in
  24 wxWidgets resembles to POSIX1.c threads API (a.k.a. pthreads), although several
  25 functions have different names and some features inspired by Win32 thread API
  26 are there as well.
  27
  28 These classes hopefully make writing MT programs easier and they also provide
  29 some extra error checking (compared to the native - be it Win32 or Posix -
  30 thread API), however it is still a non-trivial undertaking especially for large
  31 projects. Before starting an MT application (or starting to add MT features to
  32 an existing one) it is worth asking oneself if there is no easier and safer way
  33 to implement the same functionality. Of course, in some situations threads
  34 really make sense (classical example is a server application which launches a
  35 new thread for each new client), but in others it might be an overkill. On the
  36 other hand, the recent evolution of the computer hardware shows an important
  37 trend towards multi-core systems, which are better exploited using multiple
  38 threads (e.g. you may want to split a long task among as many threads as many
  39 CPU (cores) the system reports; see wxThread::GetCPUCount).
  40
  41 To implement non-blocking operations @e without using multiple threads you have
  42 two possible implementation choices:
  43
  44 - use wxIdleEvent (e.g. to perform a long calculation while updating a progress dialog)
  45 - do everything at once but call wxWindow::Update() or wxApp::YieldFor(wxEVT_CATEGORY_UI)
  46   periodically to update the screen.
  47
  48 If instead you choose to use threads in your application, please read the
  49 following section of this overview.
  50
  51 @see wxThread, wxThreadHelper, wxMutex, wxCriticalSection, wxCondition,
  52      wxSemaphore
  53
  54
  55
  56 @section overview_thread_notes Important Notes for Multi-threaded Applications
  57
  58 When writing a multi-threaded application, it is strongly recommended that
  59 <b>no secondary threads call GUI functions</b>. The design which uses one GUI
  60 thread and several worker threads which communicate with the main one using
  61 @b events is much more robust and will undoubtedly save you countless problems
  62 (example: under Win32 a thread can only access GDI objects such as pens,
  63 brushes, device contexts created by itself and not by the other threads).
  64
  65 For communication between secondary threads and the main thread, you may use
  66 wxEvtHandler::QueueEvent or its short version ::wxQueueEvent. These functions
  67 have a thread-safe implementation so that they can be used as they are for
  68 sending events from one thread to another. However there is no built in method
  69 to send messages to the worker threads and you will need to use the available
  70 synchronization classes to implement the solution which suits your needs
  71 yourself. In particular, please note that it is not enough to derive your class
  72 from wxThread and wxEvtHandler to send messages to it: in fact, this does not
  73 work at all. You're instead encouraged to use wxThreadHelper as it greatly
  74 simplifies the communication and the sharing of resources.
  75
  76 You should also look at the wxThread docs for important notes about secondary
  77 threads and their deletion.
  78
  79 Last, remember that if wxEventLoopBase::YieldFor() is used directly or
  80 indirectly (e.g. through wxProgressDialog) in your code, then you may have both
  81 re-entrancy problems and also problems caused by the processing of events out
  82 of order. To resolve the last problem wxThreadEvent can be used: thanks to its
  83 implementation of the wxThreadEvent::GetEventCategory function wxThreadEvent
  84 classes in fact do not get processed by wxEventLoopBase::YieldFor() unless you
  85 specify the @c wxEVT_CATEGORY_THREAD flag.
  86
  87 See also the @sample{thread} for a sample showing some simple interactions
  88 between the main and secondary threads.
  89
  90 */