Work on Deskbar is slowing down
Submitted by sebp on Sat, 06/02/2007 - 00:59
Unfortunatly, I made even less changes to Deskbar-Applet than last week. I did some minor changes and started on integrating support for Deskbar.
I ran into a very annoying problem with threads in GTK+. I know that GTK+ is only thread-aware and you have to surround the critical parts with gtk.gdk.threads_enter() and gtk.gdk.threads_leave(). I already did this where the results are added to the ListStore/TreeView storing the matches. However, now and then I get a Xlib asynchronous error. I couldn't find a situation where I can reproduce this error reliably. I would be glad if anybody could give some tips on working with threads and GTK+.
Changes in detail:
- Pressing enter launches the first match
- Installing modules via Drag & Drop in preferences is now possible
- Selected text will be inserted into the entry if Deskbar is triggered
Comments
It's easier to simply add code to be executed on the main loop to the idle handler.
You can't just call enter/leave() when you are doing stuff from the thread, you also need to do it for all GTK+ usage in the main thread (including your call to gtk.main())
You'll keep things much easier if you don't try to do GTK+ work from a thread; just instead install an idle. The idle will be run in the main thread and you can do your GTK+ work there.
(In fact, from the perspective of using the deskbar embedded inside the Online Desktop big bar, *please* don't use GTK+ from other threads. Making the rest of our GTK+ usage follow the thread rules would be a big pain :-)
Just curious; The "first match" is the one on the top of the results list or the nearest to the bar? (I have deskbar at the bottom of the screen so there's a difference).
Hehe :o)
In gdesklets, we used a quite different approach. Instead of trying to lock, we run the call in the main thread and wait for it. Have a look at http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/gdesklets/trunk/utils/__init__.py?view=markup : run_in_main_thread
@Marc Fargas:
The first match is always the one on the top. It doesn't matter in which panel Deskbar is, because it will open a separate window anyway.
I'm running into xlib errors when using threads in yelp as well. Owen has the correct solution. Basically, every call to gtk needs to be surrounded by gtk.gdk.threads_enter()
Don
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