Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Creating a New Thread?

[Eric Blossom]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 08:22:07AM -0500, Michael Dickens wrote:
> Does GR have a preferred way to create a new thread?  I don't know if  
> it will work for what I need, but it's worth a try.  If it doesn't  
> work, then I have an email queued to Apple's USB list asking my next  
> question:

If you talking about creating a thread in C++, we use the omnithread
package.  It's a thin C++ wrapper on top of posix threads.  Docs in
gnuradio-core/doc/other/omnithread.pdf

If in Python, we use the standard threading package.

> The problem is in doing the USB callback under OSX at the - 
> application- level, there seems to be no way to do it without  
> blocking (via the run loop).  There are other ways at lower levels,  
> but those are -kernel- things, which really should be kept to kext's  
> and such (and don't compile without easily in an application for  
> whatever reason).  So my thought is that, since the run loop is be  
> applied to the whole application and all it's threads, to create a  
> new thread to run the loop, thus freeing up both the "read", "write",  
> and OSX callbacks from having to deal with this blocking.
> 
> It's worth noting that the LIBUSB folks are working on getting async  
> and isoch data transport implemented in a more robust fashion ... but  
> who knows when that will be released? - MLD

Isoch is of no interest to us (can't obtain the throughput you can get
with bulk), but getting the async stuff implemented in a standard way
would be good.  They do know about our fusb_* code.

Eric