Re: [Devel] FreeType Cache in multithread program

[Vincent Caron]

Jan Slupski wrote:
> How FreeType Cache (and FreeType itself) works in multithread environment?

FreeType does not have any provision for multithread safety, it's up to 
the user to manage ressource access contention. FreeType does not use 
any global at all, so it's actually easy to manage contention :)


> Is it all right to have only one Cache structure created for use by
> multiple threads, or it's necessary to have one cache per thread?

If you access this single cache instance from different threads without 
a mutex, that could lead to strange things indeed. For instance, if you 
happen to fetch a glyph from the cache while a new one is being inserted 
in another thread, I guess you'll end up reading from an inconsistent 
hashtable and get a bad glyph (TM), potentially from any face that 
happened to cross that cache. Fetching a glyph from the cache is not a 
read-only operation since it can trigger a rendering (when the glyph's 
not there).

I don't recommend having multiple cache instances until having a very 
good reason, since it's easier to manage memory usage limits from a 
single cache.