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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Enabling threads

From: Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:11:28 -0800
That's correct. Checking for updates would be pretty easy if we could connect to the server, issue a request, and feed the response to read_prefs_file(). It'd be even easier if we could do so from a thread instead of a separate process.


In regard to Ulf's comment about threads not working well with GTK+ 2.4, it looks like that's still the case and won't change any time soon. The threads section of the GDK reference on developer.gnome.org says:

"Unfortunately the above holds with the X11 backend only. With the Win32 backend, GDK calls should not be attempted from multiple threads at all."

There's also a bug entry at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60620 that's been marked WONTFIX with the recommendation of using idle/timer callbacks instead of threads for display code.

LEGO wrote:
However I believe that what Gerald is talking about is using threads
for asyncronously executing upgrades.

I do not think that the very linking to the thread libraries causes
performance degradation.

If on a single processor you must continiuously switch contexts
between the main thread and the redraw one that causes a significant
overhead.

However, wouldn't be better just fork the upgrade agent?

On 11/8/06, ronnie sahlberg <ronniesahlberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
yes.

we used to have 2 threads in the old ethereal for a short period.

one thread for the main application and a second thread that was
dedicated to only update/redraw teh statistics taps once every few
seconds.

this did cause a quite significant degradation in performance/speed of
ethereal which is why it was removed :-(



On 11/8/06, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx> wrote:
Gerald Combs wrote:
Is there any reason threads shouldn't be enabled by default?  It would
make implementing the version checking and windows update features in
the roadmap a bit easier and cleaner.

Sorry, but I don't really understand the relationship - can you explain
what you mean?

When I remember correct, the threading support wasn't working well with
GTK2.4, but that might have changed since then.

Regards, ULFL
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