C++11 non-blocking, long-running, producer consumer threads - multithreading

Question

I am trying to teach myself C++11 threading, and I would like to start a background producer thread at the beginning of the application, and have it run until application exit. I would also like to have consumer thread (which also runs for the life of the application).
A real-world example would be a producer thread listening on a Com port for incoming GPS data. Once a full message had been accumulated, it could be parsed to see if it was a message of interest, then converted into a string (say), and 'delivered back' to be consumed (update current location, for example).
My issue is I haven't been able to figure out how to do this without blocking the rest of the application when I 'join()' on the consumer thread.
Here is my very simplified example that hopefully shows my issues:
#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <QDebug>
#include <thread>
#include <atomic>
#include <iostream>
#include <queue>
#include <mutex>
#include <chrono>
#include "threadsafequeuetwo.h"
ThreadSafeQueueTwo<int> goods;
std::mutex mainMutex;
std::atomic<bool> isApplicationRunning = false;
void theProducer ()
{
std::atomic<int> itr = 0;
while(isApplicationRunning)
{
// Simulate this taking some time...
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(60));
// Push the "produced" value onto the queue...
goods.push(++itr);
// Diagnostic printout only...
if ((itr % 10) == 0)
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(mainMutex);
std::cout << "PUSH " << itr << " on thread ID: "
<< std::this_thread::get_id() << std::endl;
}
// Thread ending logic.
if (itr > 100) isApplicationRunning = false;
}
}
void theConsumer ()
{
while(isApplicationRunning || !goods.empty())
{
int val;
// Wait on new values, and 'pop' when available...
goods.waitAndPop(val);
// Here, we would 'do something' with the new values...
// Simulate this taking some time...
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(10));
// Diagnostic printout only...
if ((val % 10) == 0)
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(mainMutex);
std::cout << "POP " << val << " on thread ID: "
<< std::this_thread::get_id() << std::endl;
}
}
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
std::cout << "MAIN running on thread ID: "
<< std::this_thread::get_id() << std::endl;
// This varaiable gets set to true at startup, and,
// would only get set to false when the application
// wants to exit.
isApplicationRunning = true;
std::thread producerThread (theProducer);
std::thread consumerThread (theConsumer);
producerThread.detach();
consumerThread.join(); // BLOCKS!!! - how to get around this???
std::cout << "MAIN ending on thread ID: "
<< std::this_thread::get_id() << std::endl;
}
The ThreadSafeQueueTwo class is the thread safe queue implementation taken almost exactly as is from the "C++ Concurrency In Action" book. This seems to work just fine. Here it is if anybody is interested:
#ifndef THREADSAFEQUEUETWO_H
#define THREADSAFEQUEUETWO_H
#include <queue>
#include <memory>
#include <mutex>
#include <condition_variable>
template<typename T>
class ThreadSafeQueueTwo
{
public:
ThreadSafeQueueTwo()
{}
ThreadSafeQueueTwo(ThreadSafeQueueTwo const& rhs)
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
myQueue = rhs.myQueue;
}
void push(T newValue)
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
myQueue.push(newValue);
myCondVar.notify_one();
}
void waitAndPop(T& value)
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
myCondVar.wait(lock, [this]{return !myQueue.empty(); });
value = myQueue.front();
myQueue.pop();
}
std::shared_ptr<T> waitAndPop()
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
myCondVar.wait(lock, [this]{return !myQueue.empty(); });
std::shared_ptr<T> sharedPtrToT (std::make_shared<T>(myQueue.front()));
myQueue.pop();
return sharedPtrToT;
}
bool tryPop(T& value)
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
if (myQueue.empty())
return false;
value = myQueue.front();
myQueue.pop();
return true;
}
std::shared_ptr<T> tryPop()
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
if (myQueue.empty())
return std::shared_ptr<T>();
std::shared_ptr<T> sharedPtrToT (std::make_shared<T>(myQueue.front()));
myQueue.pop();
return sharedPtrToT;
}
bool empty()
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(myMutex);
return myQueue.empty();
}
private:
mutable std::mutex myMutex;
std::queue<T> myQueue;
std::condition_variable myCondVar;
};
#endif // THREADSAFEQUEUETWO_H
Here's the output:
I know there are obvious issues with my example, but my main question is how would I run something like this in the background, without blocking the main thread?
Perhaps an even better way of trying to solve this is, is there a way that every time the producer has 'produced' some new data, could I simply call a method in the main thread, passing in the new data? This would be similar to queued signal/slots it Qt, which I am big fan of.