I have a weird problem regarding the use of threads inside a Firebreath plugin (in this case a FB plugin, but could happen anywhere); I will try to explain:
1) My plugin creates a thread (static), and it receives a pointer to "this" every time it gets added to a page.
2) So, now I have a thread with a pointer to the plugin, so I can call it's methods.
3) Very nice so far, BUT, suppose that I have a button (coded in HTML), which when pressed will REMOVE the current plugin, put in place another one and launch another thread.
I have described my scenario, now for the problem, when a plugin gets added it launches a thread; inside the thread there is a pointer to "this". First time, it gets fired...while the thread is executing I press the HTML button (so, the current plugin now is destroyed) and a new one is placed. The thread from the 1st plugin ends, and now returns...but it returns to the 2nd instance of the plugin.
The plugin is an image viewer, the first plugin look for a picture, it gets removed and a new one is placed; BUT the image from the 1st plugin is placed in the 2nd one. I don't know where to start looking, apparently the pointer has an address to the plugin (e.g. 12345), the plugin gets removed and instantiated again with the same memory address (12345).
Is there some way to avoid that behavior?
This is the code I have so far:
myPlugin.h
unsigned ThreadId;
HANDLE hThread;
myPlugin.cpp
unsigned __stdcall myPlugin::Thread(void *data)
{
myPlugin* this = (myPlugin*) data;
this->getImage("http:\\host.com\\image.jpg");
_endthreadex(0); //EDIT: addedd this missing line to end the thread
}
void myPlugin::onPluginReady(std::string imageUrl)
{
hThread = (HANDLE)_beginthreadex(NULL, 0, myPlugin::Thread, (void*) **this**, 0, &ThreadId);
}
void myPlugin::getImage()
{
//get an image using CURL... //no problem here
}
You need to stop and join the thread in the shutdown() function of your Plugin class; that will be called before things are actually unloaded and that will help avoid the problem.
I would also recommend using boost::thread, since FireBreath already compiles it all in, and that will help simplify some of this; you can hold a weak_ptr in your thread to the plugin class rather than passing in a void*. Of course, either way you'll need to stop and join the thread during the plugin shutdown (and the thread needs to stop quickly or the browser will get cranky about it taking so long).
Related
I have an Android app that uses NDK - a regular Android Java app with regular UI and C++ core. There are places in the core where I need to call Java methods, which means I need a JNIEnv* for that thread, which in turn means that I need to call JavaVM->AttachCurrentThread() to get the valid env.
Previously, was just doing AttachCurrentThread and didn't bother to detach at all. It worked fine in Dalvik, but ART aborts the application as soon as a thread that has called AttachCurrentThread exits without calling DetachCurrentThread. So I've read the JNI reference, and indeed it says that I must call DetachCurrentThread. But when I do that, ART aborts the app with the following message:
attempting to detach while still running code
What's the problem here, and how to call DetachCurrentThread properly?
Dalvik will also abort if the thread exits without detaching. This is implemented through a pthread key -- see threadExitCheck() in Thread.cpp.
A thread may not detach unless its call stack is empty. The reasoning behind this is to ensure that any resources like monitor locks (i.e. synchronized statements) are properly released as the stack unwinds.
The second and subsequent attach calls are, as defined by the spec, low-cost no-ops. There's no reference counting, so detach always detaches, no matter how many attaches have happened. One solution is to add your own reference-counted wrapper.
Another approach is to attach and detach every time. This is used by the app framework on certain callbacks. This wasn't so much a deliberate choice as a side-effect of wrapping Java sources around code developed primarily in C++, and trying to shoe-horn the functionality in. If you look at SurfaceTexture.cpp, particularly JNISurfaceTextureContext::onFrameAvailable(), you can see that when SurfaceTexture needs to invoke a Java-language callback function, it will attach the thread, invoke the callback, and then if the thread was just attached it will immediately detach it. The "needsDetach" flag is set by calling GetEnv to see if the thread was previously attached.
This isn't a great thing performance-wise, as each attach needs to allocate a Thread object and do some internal VM housekeeping, but it does yield the correct behavior.
I'll try a direct and practical approach (with sample code, without use of classes) answering this question for the occasional developer that came up with this error in android, in cases where they had it working and after a OS or framework update (Qt?) it started to give problems with that error and message.
JNIEXPORT void Java_com_package_class_function(JNIEnv* env.... {
JavaVM* jvm;
env->GetJavaVM(&jvm);
JNIEnv* myNewEnv; // as the code to run might be in a different thread (connections to signals for example) we will have a 'new one'
JavaVMAttachArgs jvmArgs;
jvmArgs.version = JNI_VERSION_1_6;
int attachedHere = 0; // know if detaching at the end is necessary
jint res = jvm->GetEnv((void**)&myNewEnv, JNI_VERSION_1_6); // checks if current env needs attaching or it is already attached
if (JNI_EDETACHED == res) {
// Supported but not attached yet, needs to call AttachCurrentThread
res = jvm->AttachCurrentThread(reinterpret_cast<JNIEnv **>(&myNewEnv), &jvmArgs);
if (JNI_OK == res) {
attachedHere = 1;
} else {
// Failed to attach, cancel
return;
}
} else if (JNI_OK == res) {
// Current thread already attached, do not attach 'again' (just to save the attachedHere flag)
// We make sure to keep attachedHere = 0
} else {
// JNI_EVERSION, specified version is not supported cancel this..
return;
}
// Execute code using myNewEnv
// ...
if (attachedHere) { // Key check
jvm->DetachCurrentThread(); // Done only when attachment was done here
}
}
Everything made sense after seeing the The Invocation API docs for GetEnv:
RETURNS:
If the current thread is not attached to the VM, sets *env to NULL, and returns JNI_EDETACHED. If the specified version is not supported, sets *env to NULL, and returns JNI_EVERSION. Otherwise, sets *env to the appropriate interface, and returns JNI_OK.
Credits to:
- This question Getting error "attempting to detach while still running code" when calling JavaVm->DetachCurrentThread that in its example made it clear that it was necessary to double check every time (even though before calling detach it doesn't do it).
- #Michael that in this question comments he notes it clearly about not calling detach.
- What #fadden said: "There's no reference counting, so detach always detaches, no matter how many attaches have happened."
I use SpriteKit for Mac OS X (not iOS) to run my programs.
At the end of the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method of the "AppDelegate"-Class I start all things which are needed for initialization. Some methods do not like to be called from a background-thread like setting window-titles, resizing windows and some other tasks. So all these things are done in the main-thread.
Then we come to my problem: I cannot simply run my main program at the end of the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method, because when I do so, the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method does not quit until my main program quits. And my main program does not quit, because it shows some animation on the screen directly after starting the program.
In the case, that the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method does not quit, SpriteKit does not redraw the window, so my animation runs but I see a white window.
After quitting my program, the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method quits, too, and I see the last picture of the animation.
So I realized a workaround: I now do the initialization in the "applicationDidFinishLaunching" method and then start a background thread which runs my main program.
The "applicationDidFinishLaunching" quits after starting the background-thread and the window is updated as expected. Everything runs fine with the background-thread doing the animation.
And now the problem, I cound not solve: I need to hide the menu bar, not directly when starting the program, but after some time.
NSMenu.setMenuBarVisible(false)
Doing so is no problem when calling from the main-thread but if I hide the menu-bar from my background thread, then I can hide it once, make it visible once, hide it a second time and when making it visible a second time an exception in the AppDelegate Class stops my program:
Thread 1: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=EXC_i386_GPFLT)
My idea to solve this problem, was to post an event, which is handeled by the main-thread. But if I post a keyboard event for example, the event-handling is done within the background-thread, too.
Events like selecting a menu by the user, not programmatically are handeled from the main thread but I did not find a way to post an event which is then handeled in the main thread instead of the thread, which contains the sendEvent-command:
NSApplication.sharedApplication().sendEvent(event!) // Called from background-thread
Has anybody an idea of sending an event which is handeled by the main-thread
or
Running my program completely in the main-thread without having the problem, that the window-content is not drawn at all. This second solution would be my favourite, because there are some more things, which make problems within a background thread.
Perhaps I can start my main program from another method, some time after "applicationDidFinishLaunching" has finished.
Some deeper information to the topic above but still no solution:
I discovered, that there exists a function "performSelectorOnMainThread" which can be called from swift like this:
NSApplication.performSelectorOnMainThread(Selector(myFunctionToCall()), withObject: nil, waitUntilDone: true)
This call compiles, my function is called but in my background thread not on the main thread and an error is dumped:
2015-01-17 20:11:09.142 AudioDatabase[4449:2099588] +[NSApplication (null selector)]: unrecognized selector sent to class 0x7fff7b1d8be0
But execution continues. I was not able to call the function on any other than a few types like NSApplication, NSObject, NSThread like a class function. But I never reached the main loop with this.
Another idea was to use NSInvocation, but when I look in the documentation, only the Objective-C Part appears.
It would help, if it was possible, to simply call a function of mine with or without arguments that runs in the main thread and can do there something.
While running my program in a background thread, I discovered a way, to execute neccessary commands in the main-thread asynchronous. To do so, you have to call:
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue())
{
// This block runs in the main thread
}
So my question was, so show and hide the menu bar without crashing my program. Here are the finished functions which work, when called from a background-thread:
func m_MenuBarShow ()
{
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue())
{
NSMenu.setMenuBarVisible(true) // Class func, must be called on the Class (NSMenu) and not on the Instance (NSApp.sharedApp.mainMenu)
}
}
func m_MenuBarHide ()
{
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue())
{
NSMenu.setMenuBarVisible(false) // Class func
}
}
Please note that there is a small restriction on using this: The block is called asynchronous, that means you have to make sure, that it is finished, until doing something with the result. In the case of showing the menu bar this is no problem. But if you want to do something like opening a file, you must handle this.
I will explain this as an answer to another question of mine. Please have a look at: Open File Dialog crashes in Swift
I'm standing in front of a small (maybe not) problem. I have one function which parses XML file (very big xml ~1Gb) so it takes many time (5-6 mins to finish the func). I don't want to use it in GUI-thread because of known issues (mainwindow freezes and nothing happened, so user thinks everything goes wrong). I've tried to solve this problem by using
QtConcurrent::run
But one more problem appeared: if user press X (close button in top right corner) main GUI-thread goes down, but child-thread which was generated my QtConcurrent::run continue his work and I can kill him only by task manager.
I've decided to use QThread instead of QtConcurrent::run6 but I don't understand how can I run MainWindow class function:
void MainWindow::parseXML()
I've tried to create smth like this:
class pThread : public QThread
{
Q_OBJECT
private:
void run();
};
void pThread::run(){
MainWindow::parseXML();
}
But when I'm trying to compile it error appears:
cannot call member function 'void MainWindow::parseXML()' without object
Moreover, I don't know if it possible to update GUI-thread through this method (parseXML function changes statusBar)
What should I do?
The recommended ways to work with threads in Qt is not to inherit from QThread class, see the documentation here and you should be able to do it after that.
And yes it is possible to update the mainwindow from the thread, just code the signals and slots for that functionality, into mainwindow class code a slot that updates the progress and into the class that does the work (the xml parsing you need - there is no reason that functionality should be into the mainwindow class anyway) you code the signal that emit the progress and connect it with mainwindow's slot with Qt::QueuedConnection (note that the default auto-connection will become queued if the objects are in separate threads).
Another option is to use start a QRunnable with QThreadPool. you may want to check documentation. Be ware to wait the spawned threads with QThreadPool::waitForDone().
(Pseudo-)Code
Here is a non-compilable code-sketch of the concepts I am having trouble with:
struct Data {};
struct A {};
struct B {};
struct C {};
/* and many many more...*/
template<typename T>
class Listener {
public:
Listener(MyObject* worker):worker(worker)
{ /* do some magic to register with RTI DDS */ };
public:
// This function is used ass a callback from RTI DDS, i.e. it will be
// called from other threads when new Data is available
void callBackFunction(Data d)
{
T t = extractFromData(d);
// Option 1: direct function call
// works somewhat, but shows "QObject::startTimer: timers cannot be started
// from another thread" at the console...
worker->doSomeWorkWithData(t); //
// Option 2: Use invokeMethod:
// seems to fail, as the macro expands including '"T"' and that type isn't
// registered with the QMetaType system...
// QMetaObject::invokeMethod(worker,"doSomeGraphicsWork",Qt::AutoConnection,
// Q_ARG(T, t)
// );
// Option 3: use signals slots
// fails as I can't make Listener, a template class, a QObject...
// emit workNeedsToBeDone(t);
}
private:
MyObject* worker;
T extractFromData(Data d){ return T(d);};
};
class MyObject : public QObject {
Q_OBJECT
public Q_SLOTS:
void doSomeWorkWithData(A a); // This one affects some QGraphicsItems.
void doSomeWorkWithData(B b){};
void doSomeWorkWithData(C c){};
public:
MyObject():QObject(nullptr){};
void init()
{
// listeners are not created in the constructor, but they should have the
// same thread affinity as the MyObject instance that creates them...
// (which in this example--and in my actual code--would be the main GUI
// thread...)
new Listener<A>(this);
new Listener<B>(this);
new Listener<C>(this);
};
};
main()
{
QApplication app;
/* plenty of stuff to set up RTI DDS and other things... */
auto myObject = new MyObject();
/* stuff resulting in the need to separate "construction" and "initialization" */
myObject.init();
return app.exec();
};
Some more details from the actual code:
The Listener in the example is a RTI DataReaderListener, the callback
function is onDataAvailable()
What I would like to accomplish
I am trying to write a little distributed program that uses RTI's Connext DDS for communication and Qt5 for the GUI stuff--however, I don't believe those details do matter much as the problem, as far as I understood it, boils down to the following:
I have a QObject-derived object myObject whose thread affinity might or might not be with the main GUI thread (but for simplicity, let's assume that is the case.)
I want that object to react to event's which happen in another, non-Qt 3rd-party library (in my example code above represented by the functions doSomeWorkWithData().
What I understand so far as to why this is problematic
Disclaimer: As usual, there is always more than one new thing one learns when starting a new project. For me, the new things here are/were RTI's Connext and (apparently) my first time where I myself have to deal with threads.
From reading about threading in Qt (1,2,3,4, and 5 ) it seems to me that
QObjects in general are not thread safe, i.e. I have to be a little careful about things
Using the right way of "communicating" with QObjects should allow me to avoid having to deal with mutexes etc myself, i.e. somebody else (Qt?) can take care of serializing access for me.
As a result from that, I can't simply have (random) calls to MyClass::doSomeWorkWithData() but I need to serialize that. One, presumably easy, way to do so is to post an event to the event queue myObject lives in which--when time is available--will trigger the execution of the desired method, MyClass::doSomeWorkWithData() in my case.
What I have tried to make things work
I have confirmed that myObject, when instantiated similarly as in the sample code above, is affiliated with the main GUI thread, i.e. myObject.thread() == QApplication::instance()->thread().
With that given, I have tried three options so far:
Option 1: Directly calling the function
This approach is based upon the fact that
- myObject lives in the GUI thread
- All the created listeners are also affiliated with the GUI thread as they are
created by `myObject' and inherit its thread that way
This actually results in the fact that doSomeWorkWithData() is executed. However,
some of those functions manipulate QGraphicsItems and whenever that is the case I get
error messages reading: "QObject::startTimer: timers cannot be started from another
thread".
Option 2: Posting an event via QMetaObject::invokeMethod()
Trying to circumvent this problem by properly posting an event for myObject, I
tried to mark MyObject::doSomeWorkWithData() with Q_INVOKABLE, but I failed at invoking the
method as I need to pass arguments with Q_ARG. I properly registered and declared my custom types
represented by struct A, etc. in the example), but I failed at the fact the
Q_ARG expanded to include a literal of the type of the argument, which in the
templated case didn't work ("T" isn't a registered or declared type).
Trying to use conventional signals and slots
This approach essentially directly failed at the fact that the QMeta system doesn't
work with templates, i.e. it seems to me that there simply can't be any templated QObjects.
What I would like help with
After spending about a week on attempting to fix this, reading up on threads (and uncovering some other issues in my code), I would really like to get this done right.
As such, I would really appreciate if :
somebody could show me a generic way of how a QObject's member function can be called via a callback function from another 3rd-party library (or anything else for that matter) from a different, non QThread-controlled, thread.
somebody could explain to me why Option 1 works if I simply don't create a GUI, i.e. do all the same work, just without a QGraphcisScene visualizing it (and the project's app being a QCoreApplication instead of a QApplication and all the graphics related work #defineed out).
Any, and I mean absolutely any, straw I could grasp on is truly appreciated.
Update
Based on the accepted answer I altered my code to deal with callbacks from other threads: I introduced a thread check at the beginning of my void doSomeWorkWithData() functions:
void doSomeWorkWithData(A a)
{
if( QThread::currentThread() != this->thread() )
{
QMetaObject::invokeMethod( this,"doSomeWorkWithData"
,Qt::QueuedConnection
,Q_ARG(A, a) );
return;
}
/* The actual work this function does would be below here... */
};
Some related thoughts:
I was contemplating to introduce a QMutexLocker before the if statement, but decided against it: the only part of the function that is potentially used in parallel (anything above the return; in the if statement) is--as far as I understand--thread safe.
Setting the connection type manually to Qt::QueuedConnection: technically, if I understand the documentation correctly, Qt should do the right thing and the default, Qt::AutoConnection, should end up becoming a Qt::QueuedConnection. But since would always be the case when that statement is reached, I decided to put explicitly in there to remind myself about why this is there.
putting the queuing code directly in the function and not hiding it in an interim function: I could have opted to put the call to invokeMethod in another interim function, say queueDoSomeWorkWithData()', which would be called by the callback in the listener and then usesinvokeMethodwith anQt::AutoConnection' on doSomeWorkWithData(). I decided against this as there seems no way for me to auto-code this interim function via templates (templates and the Meta system was part of the original problem), so "the user" of my code (i.e. the person who implements doSomeWorkWithData(XYZ xyz)) would have to hand type the interim function as well (as that is how the templated type names are correctly resolved). Including the check in the actual function seems to me to safe typing an extra function header, keeps the MyClass interface a little cleaner, and better reminds readers of doSomeWorkWithData() that there might be a threading issue lurking in the dark.
It is ok to call a public function on a subclass of QObject from another thread if you know for certain that the individual function will perform only thread-safe actions.
One nice thing about Qt is that it will handle foreign threads just as well as it handles QThreads. So, one option is to create a threadSafeDoSomeWorkWithData function for each doSomeWorkWithData that does nothing but QMetaMethod::invoke the non-threadsafe one.
public:
void threadSafeDoSomeWorkWithData(A a) {
QMetaMethod::invoke("doSomeWorkWithData", Q_ARG(A,a));
}
Q_INVOKABLE void doSomeWorkWithData(A a);
Alternatively, Sergey Tachenov suggests an interesting way of doing more or less the same thing in his answer here. He combines the two functions I suggested into one.
void Obj2::ping() {
if (QThread::currentThread() != this->thread()) {
// not sure how efficient it is
QMetaObject::invoke(this, "ping", Qt::QueuedConnection);
return;
}
// thread unsafe code goes here
}
As to why you see normal behaviour when not creating a GUI? Perhaps you're not doing anything else that is unsafe, aside from manipulating GUI objects. Or, perhaps they're the only place in which your thread-safety problems are obvious.
I currently have a very long running GUI-Application in QT. Later that application is going to be tested and run on an embedded device without a keyboard in full screen.
For easier debugging I have a custom assert macro, which allows me to ignore certain asserts (may include known buggy parts I have to work around for now) etc. For the time being I just print something on the console such as "Assertion: XXXX failed; abort/ignore". This is fine when I start the application within a console, but ultimately fails when I run it on the final device. In that case the assert will just block the main thread waiting for input and make the GUI hang badly without hope for recovery.
Now I am thinking about how to remedy this situation. One Idea is to just have the assert crash, as the standard assert does. But I do not really like that Idea, since there are a lot of know problems, and I've always found ignorable asserts very helpful when testing applications. Also I would have to put the messages into a separate file, so I can later see what happened while testing. Reading these files afterwards is possible, but I would prefer a simpler way to find out what went wrong.
The other idea was to make a window instead. However the asserts may be triggered in any thread and I can only create new windows in the GUI thread. Also the main event loop may be blocked by the assert, so I cannot be sure that it will handle the events correctly. I would somehow need a fully responsive stand-alone window in a separate thread, which only handles a few buttons.
Is this somehow possible in QT4?
You may post events to main thread to display dialog and wait for an answer from non-gui threads, or just display dialog if current thread is app thread
int result = -1;
if ( QTrhead::currentThread() == QCoreApplication::instance()->thread() )
{
result = AssertHandler->ShowDialog(where, what, condition);
}
else
{
QMetaObject::invokeMethod(AssertHandler, "ShowDialog", Qt::QueuedBlockingConnection, Q_RETURN_ARG(int, result), Q_ARG(QString, where), Q_ARG(QString, what), Q_ARG(QString, condition);
}
if (result != 0)
{
// handle assert
}
The AssertHandler is QObject based class with slot int ShowDialog(const QString &where, const QString what, const QString &condition). It should display dialog with assert data and buttons assert/ignore. Returns 0 when user pressed ignore, otherwise returns non zero value.