[PyKDE] Multithreaded GUI programming

[Michael Lauer]

Hi,

I have a question regarding efficient programming in a multithreaded
environment. Our scenario
deals with Qt, but the problem is a general one.

Our setup is a typical multithreaded one: We have a number of worker
threads and one GUI thread,
both communicating via a Queue. The problem is: How not to waste CPU
resources by using a timer
to poll the communication Queue from within the GUI thread.

Some more information: Since we're targetting a PDA with Qt/Embedded,
we're using PyQt.
The PDA runs a non-threaded Qt/Embedded 2.3.4 and will for quite a long
time. Qt/E 2.3.4
is _not_ thread-safe, so all calls to Qt must be done from same thread.
This also means,
it's unfortunately not possible to call QApplication.postEvent() from a
worker thread
to make the GUI thread to check for a new message in the Queue.

How is this handled in low-level programs? In C++, I would use a pipe
for the communication
and would overload the main event loop adding a pipe file descriptor to
the select() call.
This way I can simultaneously wait for gui events and non-gui events
without wasting CPU
resources.

In Python, the situation is different, since I can't overload the main
loop - it would be
much to slow (let alone, that the internal gui main loop functions are
private and thus are not
exported). Even if I could, in Python I'd rather use Queues than pipes -
and a Queue is nothing
which can just be added to a select call.

Could you share some insights with me?

Cheers,

Mickey.
-- 
:M:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Inf. Michael 'Mickey' Lauer  
mickey at tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de 
  Raum 10b - ++49 69 798 28358       Fachbereich Informatik und Biologie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------