Re: [Rubycocoa-talk] Threads in RubyCocoa

[Laurent S. <lau...@gm...>]

Hi Matias,

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Matias Pablo Brutti
<mat...@gm...> wrote:
> Hi ,
>
> I've read that rubycocoa has some issues with threads , NSThreads, which
> will be the best approach to take to actually use threads?, which type of
> threads should I use and finally is there an example or doc on rubycocoa
> threads that you recommend ?,
>
> I'm implementing an application that makes lots of requests which takes some
> time. My idea is to thread that process and while I receiving he info update
> the TableView, all this while not frezzing my main application but without
> threads I do not see how to do that. any ideas ?
>

The current version of Ruby (1.8) not being thread-safe, it is
currently impossible to use NSThreads. Well you can, but RubyCocoa
will route calls into the main thread for you (to avoid crashing), and
it might cause a deadlock sometimes.

The preferable way is to use Ruby threads instead. In Leopard, both
the interpreter and RubyCocoa were modified to support calling
Objective-C from Ruby threads. But this support is not ideal (you can
see that as a hack), and sometimes it doesn't work.

You can also use NSTimers or any other mechanism driven by the Cocoa runloop.

HTH,
Laurent