IRC Chat with Itamar regarding using the Reactor in a threaded application

bkirsch OSAF is working on a Thread Personal Information Management System called Chandler
bkirsch so with in our threaded app
bkirsch we need to run a reactor in a separate thread
bkirsch and have our twisted code all use that reactor
bkirsch so a request from the main thread to retrieve mail kicks off a new thread which needs to get a reference to the reactor running in another thread potential
bkirsch connect to a tcp host via the reactor and retrieve mail
bkirsch then poat back to the main thread
itamar  to run functions in reactor thread
itamar  reactor.callFromThread(function, arg1, kw=1)
bkirsch mean while another aspect of Chandler may be using the reactor from another thread to get calendar info for examples
itamar  that *schedules* it
itamar  that's fine, as long as you use reactor.callFromThread
itamar  instead of scheduling the function you want directly
bkirsch so it is possible for for multiple threads to use the reactor at the same time and perform separate actrions?
bkirsch correct?
itamar  no
itamar  it's possible for multiple threads to schedule stuff to run in reactor thread
itamar  which gives same effect
itamar  but you have to understand how it works to get it right
bkirsch that is fine
bkirsch are there any performance issues there
bkirsch can you set up multiple reactor instances?
bkirsch at the same time
Jerub   the performance issue is something you're already experiencing - the GIL.
bkirsch interesting
bkirsch are there any examples of multi thread scheduling
bkirsch I can look at
bkirsch we are trying to figure out how best to incorporate Twisted and the Reactor thread configurayion is gonna be the key to getting it right
itamar  you can't do multiple reactor instances
itamar  and there's no need fo rit
itamar  bkirsch: what you wwant is a wrapper around reactor.callFromThread
itamar  bkirsch: which calls function in twisted thread
itamar  but from caller's point of view blocks until you get a result
itamar  or exception
itamar  10 lines of code or so
itamar  and then a thread can just x = blockFromThread(f, 1) and f(1) will get called in reactor thread
itamar  and caller thread will block until result is available, at which point blockFromThread will return it
|<--    ducky_linux has left irc.freenode.net ("hmmpf, somehow started mozilla as root")
bkirsch Itamar: will this work well when many different thread tasks are utilizing the Reactor?
itamar  yep      

-- BrianKirsch - 27 May 2004