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EnTerr's avatar
EnTerr
Roku Guru
9 years ago

How can a function figure out in which thread it's running?

So i was coding in my head last night when going to sleep and a question popped - how would my utility function figure out if it was called from the main thread or the render thread? I figured i'll ask the club here - it's probably something trivial, plus there might be multiple ways?

(If i need to elaborate "how come the developer does not know where he's calling the fn?" - assume the person writing the channel is different from the one that wrote some utility function, one can't rely they'll just call the fn from the "right" location and may want to build a check in)
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  • sgranger's avatar
    sgranger
    Channel Surfer
    5 years ago

    In case someone is still looking for this, there's the roSGNode.threadInfo() method that was introduced in OS 9.

  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    "Komag" wrote:
    Can't pass an extra variable in scenegraph?

    read the 2nd paragraph i added. we were typing concurrently :mrgreen:
  • Komag's avatar
    Komag
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    This is probably not anywhere near what you're looking for, but I had an idea - If your cycle has, say 9 steps, maybe keep a global variable that always updates which step it's on (1-9 or a-i), and in that function have it print which step that global variable is currently set to, thus giving a clue at least of what point in the cycle the function was called, such as an unexpected early point instead of the usual later on point.
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    "Komag" wrote:
    This is probably not anywhere near what you're looking for

    Correct. What i am asking for is how a standalone function - which cannot rely on additional parameters or global variables or on end-developer sense of decency - can determine through some voodoo inside its body if it's running in the render or main thread. You know, just like how through roAppInfo.isDev() it can determine if app is side-loaded or published. E.g. one heuristic i thought of was to check `m.top` - it exists in the render thread and does not^ exist in the main thread.

    (^) that is, unless the Joker has assigned some value to m.top in main