[Interest] Heavily Commented Example: Simple Single Frontend with Two Backends

[Bo Thorsen]

Hi Daniel,

No matter what you do, you have an object living between threads. If you 
use AOD, then that object is the one with this "problem". Something 
needs to sit between the threads. That might not be the case in boost, 
but in Qt there is no way around this. You need an object to hold the 
thread, and that object is not in the thread itself. QThread is the one 
with this problem, if you subclass it. If not, the object holding the 
QThread is because it will instantiate objects for the new thread.

I'd disagree any day that boost has a better thread model than Qt (still 
have nightmares about ASIO), but hey, I'm a Qt expert, not a boost expert :)

Bo.

Den 22-10-2012 12:11, Daniel Price skrev:
>
> The problem with the subclassing pattern is that you end up with an 
> object spanning two threads. You class is instantiated in the main 
> thread (along with it's member data) but run(), when called, is 
> operating in a different thread. It's all too easy to get into a mess 
> doing this.
>
> You should look into the active object design pattern. The idea is 
> that you hide the object that lives in another thread behind a 
> managing object. I only discovered this recently and it's vastly 
> superior to subclassing QThread, or using moveToThread or any of that 
> rubbish. In fact, I don't use QThread at all these days; C++11 (and 
> boost if you don't have C++11 yet) has a better threading model.
>
> *From:*interest-bounces+daniel.price=fxhome.com at qt-project.org 
> [mailto:interest-bounces+daniel.price=fxhome.com at qt-project.org] *On 
> Behalf Of *Bo Thorsen
> *Sent:* 22 October 2012 06:40
> *To:* interest at qt-project.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Interest] Heavily Commented Example: Simple Single 
> Frontend with Two Backends
>
> Den 21-10-2012 23:46, d3fault skrev:
>
>     On Oct 21, 2012 11:02 AM, "Bo Thorsen" <bo at fioniasoftware.dk
>     <mailto:bo at fioniasoftware.dk>> wrote:
>     >
>     > If you set out to correct the documentation, you should make it
>     better,
>     > not go from one one-sided way of thinking to another.
>     >
>
>     What? Are we talking about the same thing? 99% of the time,
>     implementing QThread and overriding run() is not what the user
>     wants to do... but that's what the (currently being revised)
>     documentation suggests. Sure it's not completely wrong... but that
>     method should be just barely mentioned, and only after the better
>     usage (moveToThread) is thoroughly explained. There are too many
>     people "doing it wrong" (to quote that one article).
>
>
> See, this is where you are wrong. I've heard this claim over and over 
> again, and that doesn't make it right. Saying that subclassing is only 
> valid for 1% of the time is just silly. There are plenty of perfectly 
> fine reasons to do this.
>
> 1) If you have pure computations (emitting progress signals can take 
> it off the list)
>
> 2) If you have initialization that has to run in your thread, one way 
> is to do a run method like this:
>
> run() {
>   init();
>   createObjects();
>   exec();
> }
>
> 3) moveToThread has problems as well. The worst of them: 
> thread->moveToThread(thread). I have actually seen this in customer code.
>
> 4) By letting the thread instantiate it's object, you probably have 
> better separation of responsibility. With moveToThread, you don't just 
> start something where you don't need to know how it's implemented. 
> That's bad OOP style.
>
> Now, please understand what I'm saying. I do the moveToThread way more 
> than half the times I use threads, so I agree that it's better in most 
> cases. The only thing I'm saying here is that when you claim that 
> subclassing is wrong 99% of the time, that's waaaaaaaay off the mark. 
> It's a valid tool in the toolbox.
>
>   
> Bo Thorsen.
>   
> Come by my DevDays talk in Berlin - "Designing for testability". Learn how to build and run your unit tests with the Qt application.
>   
> Fionia Software - Qt experts for hire.
>
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-- 
Bo Thorsen.

Come by my DevDays talk in Berlin - "Designing for testability". Learn how to build and run your unit tests with the Qt application.

Fionia Software - Qt experts for hire.

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