Re: threads & OCamlTK

["Jun P. Furuse" <Jun.Furuse@inria.fr>]

Francois Rouaix wrote:

> > And, on a vaguely related topic, is it possible to use threads
> > with programs
> > that also use OCamlTK?  I know Tk is not threadsafe, but if only
> > one thread is calling Tk functions, then perhaps it's still OK?  
> 
> Yes, it should be ok. But this also includes the Tk event loop, and thus
> all callbacks. Also, there is the issue of using Thread primitives within
> a callback (e.g. having the callback on a button triggering a condition).
> In bytecode threads, this will probably not work.
> Jun and I discussed these issues a long time ago, and Jun implemented
> a modified version of the CamlTK core where the event loop would be handled
> in Caml instead of C, so as to be compatible with threads, to some extent
> (all other Tk calls still need to be in a critical section).
> I don't think we ever distributed this version, and I'm not even sure it
> would work on Windows, but you might want to check with Jun.

I implemented this threaded version of OCamlTk, called ThreadTk about
one year ago. You can see the code at the caml cvs:  

  http://camlcvs.inria.fr/cgi-bin/cvsweb.out/bazar-ocaml/camltk41/thread-tk/

Please README.threadtk for more information.

But this is based on an old release of OCamlTk and not maintained at
all for long. I may update it if I have some spare time... 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jun P. Furuse 					 Jun.Furuse@inria.fr
  INRIA
    Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique