Re: [Chicken-users] Using multithreaded foreign library

[Brandon J. Van Every]

felix winkelmann wrote:
> On 1/1/00, Tomi Neste <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Hi, I'm trying to use the PTK library(http://www.phelios.com/ptk/) with
> > chicken-2.41 on Win32/msvc. Things work fine when compiling to binary 
> > with
> > csc, but if I try to use the repl(either with (repl) or loading the lib
> > dynamically to csi) everything hangs up as soon as I open a window with
> > PTK.
> > That's when compiling the lib multithreaded as it's supposed. 
> > Everything,
> > including the repl seem to work fine if I leave out the /mt when 
> > compiling
> > the bindings.
> > I guess the problem could be in the PTK side but just in case, is it
> > possible to link a multithreaded library with chicken and does anyone 
> > have
> > any idea why things work fine as long as I don't use repl?
>
> Linking with different runtime libraries is a particularly nasty issue on
> Windows and may result in unexplainable freezes and crashes.
>
> The problem is that I'm not able to give decent Windows support, since
> I've not done any Windows development for a long time. It may be that 
> adding
> /mt to the compiler/linker options of the chicken build helps.
>
> Sorry, I'm not much help here.

In the past I've run into /mt issues when porting other open source 
builds to VS .NET 2003.  I've generally "resolved" them by asking 
myself, "do I really need multithreaded support?"  Typically the answer 
has been "no," and so that's what I've done.  So if there's a way to use 
the PTK Game Engine in a single threaded mode, I'd evaluate whether 
that's adequate for your present needs.

Nevertheless, I did do some build work on the hair of /mt targets and so 
forth.  The correct way to support it, would be to create addtional 
Chicken libraries and exes that enable /mt.  It can be done in CMake 
2.4.3.  I'm not entirely up on whether it's easy or tedious, but I'm 
sure it's possible. 

But here's the catch.  I'm not going to chase after a /mt build 
capability in the absence of someone with *real* requirements, who will 
do *real* work to ensure that /mt is *exercised*.  There needs to be a 
reliable consumer for this.  If your interest in /mt and the PTK Game 
Engine is transient rather than resolute, I will say "eh" to worrying 
about it myself.  I will of course take patches, from anyone who does 
just about anything useful in CMake, /mt or otherwise.

Two ways to ensure the exercise:
- have someone, like yourself, make serious regular use of a /mt consumer
- have people, other than myself, implement nightly testing suites for 
Chicken in general

We've talked about testing suites before, but as far as anyone stepping 
up to do real work, crickets have chirped.  I still have plenty of real 
work of my own to do.  I'm interested in Kitware's offer of CTest 
dashboard resources, but it will be quite some time before it becomes a 
priority to me.  I would like to see other people take responsibility 
for such a major area of Chicken infrastructure.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every