Re: [Rubycocoa-talk] Newbie Question: Threads

[Arcadio R. G. <arc...@gm...>]

Hi Allison,

thank you for the detailed explanation.

 From what I see you propose to run the GUI in a separate process,  
which makes a lot of sense in order to avoid the global interpreter  
lock.

Answering your questions, my app is conceptually very simple. It's a  
batch process. I'd prefer to launch the GUI from the command line. The  
GUI will be basically a progress bar and a tree capturing the  
different details of the execution (sort of a log).

Moreover, I'd prefer to use method calls for communicating with the  
GUI, that's why I was asking about how to instantiate a native thread  
from Ruby using RubyCocoa. Let's see if somebody knows how to do this.

If not, I'll do what you propose. The interface between the program  
and the GUI is pretty simple. Probably a smart way of communicating  
with the GUI is to use DrB (Distributed Ruby). You get all the  
marshalling for free. It's roughly equivalent to RMI or RPC.

-Arcadio

> Hi Arcadio,
>
> OK, so you want a progress bar for your console-based app, is that
> right?
>
> A couple of questions:
>
> 1) Do you want to launch the app from the command line, or by clicking
> on the app icon in the finder?
> 2) is the console-based app interactive (does it take any input)?
> 3) How are you planning on communicating between the GUI and the app?
> Method calls? Communicating using stdin/stdout?
>
> Based on what you've said so far, I would suggest launching your UI
> app from the Finder, then in that app, fork, and launch your command
> line app in the child process.  Make your command line app set up a
> server socket on a port that you have chosen. All input/output is
> directed to the socket created during the accept on the server socket.
>  Then, in the parent process, start trying to connect to the server
> socket your command line app sets up.  Once it succeeds, your UI app,
> and the command line app can communicate, whilst running in seperate
> processes.  If you're really bored, you can even move ruby objects
> between the two, by marshalling them using YAML etc.
>
> It's a bit of a messy solution, but it has a couple of advantages:
> 1) It actually works (I've done this before), which, when it comes to
> simultaneous execution and Ruby, is no mean feat.
> 2) It leaves your original app as a standalone console app, so you can
> continue to use it as you have up until now.
>
> Anyhow, someone else may know of a cleaner way of achieving this, but
> I for one have never found another way that didn't fall foul of the
> global interpreter lock.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Alli
>
>
> Le 5 avr. 09 à 11:47, Arcadio Rubio García a écrit :
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm trying to build a very simple GUI for my Ruby application using
>> Cocoa. I have no experience with Cocoa or ObjC, so that might be part
>> of the problem.
>>
>> Anyway, I have a Ruby text application and I would like to add this
>> GUI as an observer. So far I have other observers that for instance
>> write a log to a file, but none of them are graphical.
>>
>> My problem is that I need to run the GUI in another thread since when
>> I start it, the call to app.run (in the code below) never returns. As
>> far as I know, I cannot use Ruby (green) threads.
>>
>> Note that due to the design my project, I cannot invert control and
>> run my application within the thread created by Cocoa. Also, my code
>> is not (yet) compatible with Ruby 1.9, so I have to stick to 1.8.
>>
>> Can anyone point how to execute app.run in another thread in the code
>> shown below. I've tried using
>> NSThread.detachNewThreadSelector_toTarget_withObject but haven't been
>> successful.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>> require 'osx/cocoa'
>> include OSX
>>
>>
>> class AppDelegate < NSObject
>>  def init
>>    frame = [200.0, 300.0, 250.0, 100.0]
>>    @win =
>> NSWindow.alloc.initWithContentRect_styleMask_backing_defer(frame,
>>
>> 15, 2, 0)
>>    @win.setTitle 'Test'
>>    @win.setLevel 0
>>    @bar = NSProgressIndicator.alloc.initWithFrame [10.0, 10.0, 80.0,
>> 80.0]
>>    @win.contentView.addSubview(@bar)
>>    @bar.setIndeterminate(false)
>>    @win.display
>>    @win.orderFrontRegardless
>>  end
>>
>>  def step
>>    @bar.incrementBy(20)
>>  end
>> end
>>
>>
>> app = NSApplication.sharedApplication
>> app.setDelegate(AppDelegate.alloc.init)
>> app.run
>>
>>
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