Multi-thread Question in Morph?

ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Sat Jan 31 16:52:26 UTC 2004


Hi all

I'm designing a simple environment with a bot evolving in a maze. The 
user can control the bots from a kind of workspace.
In an old implementation, I did not use step and put some delay and 
World doOneCycle. Not so good. I decided to
clean that and  to use the step method to execute commands sent to this 
morph.


The morph has a queue of actions (which are reified message sends with 
a future to hold their result).

For example the method go is implemented as
NewBot>>go
	
	self addAction: #goPrimitive

this means that when the action is executed the method goPrimitive will 
be executed which is in fact implemented.

goPrimitive

	self position: (self position + (10 at 10))

addAction: and similar methods are implemented that way: a command 
object is created and put in the queue and returned.

addAction: aSelector arguments: anArray
	
	| anAction |
	anAction := (BotCommand selector: aSelector arguments: anArray).
	actionQueue addLast: anAction.
	^ anAction

A command object is a message reification that holds a future so that I 
can get result back to the sender when necessary (for exmaple getter 
method, as in the following example. result in that case get the future 
and ask its value.

diamNumber
	
	^ (self addAction: #diamNumberPrimitive) result

The step method goes over the queue and execute the actions one after 
the other. It then puts the future value

step
	
	| action res |
	^ actionQueue isEmpty
		ifFalse: [action := self removeAction.
				res := self perform: action selector withArguments: action 
arguments.
				action setFutureValue: res]


Now I have the following problem that you can try just by loading the 
cs.
If I create a morph NewBot new openInWorld, inspect it and execute self 
diamNumber in an inspector, the complete environment
is blocked.

I simplified the problem to its essence in the attached file. If you 
open an inspect and evaluate self diamNumber
the system freezes. Apparently there is not enough thread in morphic. 
So I started to see where I could
put another thread. The problem is that
- in an inspector doing [self diamNumber] fork does not help because I 
would need another future to get the value form the thread
- opening an inspector in another block (self inspect fork) and in this 
new inspector doing self diamNumber still freezes the system
My impression is that the UI scheduler does not let me doing that.


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does anybody has an idea of how I could solve that problem?



stef


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