I'm in the process of converting a program from PyGTK to PyGObject introspection for the first time and I've hit a roadblock with threading. I have a process that takes some time to complete, so I pop up a dialog with a progress bar on it and I use a thread to do the process and to update the progress bar. This worked fine with PyGTK but after converting to PyGObject, I get all the usual improper threading weirdness: the program hangs, but it seems to hang in different parts of the process, etc. So I get the impression that something has changed but I can't figure out what.
Here's this simple PyGTK progressbar example: http://aruiz.typepad.com/siliconisland/2006/04/threads_on_pygt.html As presented on that page, the code works. I've converted it to PyGObject introspection and I get the same problems as in my program: it hangs, it doesn't properly update the progress bar, etc.
import threading
import random, time
from gi.repository import Gtk, Gdk
#Initializing the gtk's thread engine
Gdk.threads_init()
class FractionSetter(threading.Thread):
"""This class sets the fraction of the progressbar"""
#Thread event, stops the thread if it is set.
stopthread = threading.Event()
def run(self):
"""Run method, this is the code that runs while thread is alive."""
#Importing the progressbar widget from the global scope
global progressbar
#While the stopthread event isn't setted, the thread keeps going on
while not self.stopthread.isSet() :
# Acquiring the gtk global mutex
Gdk.threads_enter()
#Setting a random value for the fraction
progressbar.set_fraction(random.random())
# Releasing the gtk global mutex
Gdk.threads_leave()
#Delaying 100ms until the next iteration
time.sleep(0.1)
def stop(self):
"""Stop method, sets the event to terminate the thread's main loop"""
self.stopthread.set()
def main_quit(obj):
"""main_quit function, it stops the thread and the gtk's main loop"""
#Importing the fs object from the global scope
global fs
#Stopping the thread and the gtk's main loop
fs.stop()
Gtk.main_quit()
#Gui bootstrap: window and progressbar
window = Gtk.Window()
progressbar = Gtk.ProgressBar()
window.add(progressbar)
window.show_all()
#Connecting the 'destroy' event to the main_quit function
window.connect('destroy', main_quit)
#Creating and starting the thread
fs = FractionSetter()
fs.start()
Gtk.main()
In the documentation for Gdk's threading capabilities, it stresses that you first must run g_thread_init(NULL) before running gdk_threads_init(). But to run that, you need to link in some extra libraries. If I try to import GLib through introspection and then I try to run GLib.thread_init(), I get the following error:
>>> from gi.repository import GLib
>>> GLib.thread_init(None)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gi/types.py", line 44, in function
return info.invoke(*args)
glib.GError: Could not locate g_thread_init: `g_thread_init': /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_thread_init
I assume this is because the extra threading libraries weren't linked. If this is the cause of my threading problems, how can I work with GLib as if those libraries have been linked?