thread safe setNeedsDisplay:

[Pierre-Yves Rivaille]

I've implemented a "thread safe" setNeedsDisplay: (and 
setNeedsDisplayInRect:).
It behaves as it is supposed to according to the Cocoa doc :
when called from a working thread (i.e. not the first one), the 
setNeedsDisplay: method behaves as if it had been called from the main 
thread.

This is done by passing a message from the worker thread to the main thread 
telling it to call setNeedsDisplay:. However the message is not passed using 
NSConnection objects as the message needs to be transfered whatever the 
current runloop mode is (ConnectionReply, DefaultRunLoop, ModalPanelRunLoop 
or EventTrackingRunLoop).
To do so, I've added a GSAppKitInterThreadRunLoopWatcher to the main thread. 
It does wait on a socket. Whenever a worker thread calls setNeedsDisplay:, 
the method's arguments are added to an array and one byte is written on the 
socket. Then the GSAppKitInterThreadRunLoopWatcher reads the method's 
arguments and call setNeedsDisplay: in the main thread.

The code is not ready for integration is CVS as it is not polished. However 
I'd like to have some advice on my use of NSRunLoop/GSRunLoopWatcher and on 
the way the method's call is sent to the main thread.

Here are the 3 patches
<NSApplication.m.patch><NSRunLoop.m.patch><NSView.m.patch>
and a sample program <ThreadTest.tgz>

I hope my explanations were clear enough...

        Pierre-Yves

NSApplication.m.patch
Description: Binary data

NSRunLoop.m.patch
Description: Binary data

NSView.m.patch
Description: Binary data

ThreadTest.tgz
Description: GNU Unix tar archive