Re: [Gaim-devel] Resolving IP addresses in Gaim

[Mark D. <ma...@ki...>]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:26:52 -0500, Gary Kramlich wrote
> Mark Doliner wrote:
> > People on gaim-commits may already be familiar with this...
> > 
> > Previously there were three different methods used to resolve IP addresses in
> > Gaim.  We chose a different method at compile time based on your OS.  They all
> > used either getaddrinfo() or gethostbyname().  The differences lie in how they
> > achieved non-blockingness.
> > 
> > In Unix-land we forked a process to do the lookup, then waited for the process
> > to send us the results.  In Windows-land we spawned a thread and did the
> > lookup there.  In anything else we used a very bland implementation which
> > blocked the UI.
> > 
> > It seemed dumb to me to have three implementations of the same thing, so I got
> > rid of the Unix one and the other one and now we're using only the
> > thread-based lookup.
> > 
> > Ethan didn't like this (I think because it uses threads?), but his reasons
> > didn't really convince me.  How do other people feel?  It's pretty easy to
> > revert my change and go back to having lots of crazy and confusing code, if
> > people want.
> > 
> > -Mark
> 
> Why do we need a thread?  Can't we use a watcher or listener in our main
> loop?

We use either getaddrinfo() or gethostbyname(), and they are both blocking.

-Mark