Doc: Move multithreading guidelines to the overview page
It's helpful to see how to choose among different solutions, right after seeing short descriptions of all the solutions. - Some minor rewording was done during the move - The example about polling ports in a new thread was removed because there are better ways to do that without threads. Change-Id: I2cb571a4dbf9be93fb0ec88c60fb7406996c345b Reviewed-by: Olivier Goffart <ogoffart@woboq.com> Reviewed-by: Jerome Pasion <jerome.pasion@digia.com> Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
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@ -172,69 +172,9 @@
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\section2 Which Qt Thread Technology Should You Use?
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Sometimes you want to do more than just running a method in the context of
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another thread. You may want to have an object which lives in another
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thread that provides a service to the GUI thread. Maybe you want another
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thread to stay alive forever to poll hardware ports and send a signal to
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the GUI thread when something noteworthy has happened. Qt provides
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different solutions for developing threaded applications. The right
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solution depends on the purpose of the new thread as well as on the
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thread's lifetime.
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\table
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\header
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\li Lifetime of thread
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\li Development task
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\li Solution
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\row
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\li One call
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\li Run one method within another thread and quit the thread when the
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method is finished.
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\li Qt provides different solutions:
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\list
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\li Write a function and run it with QtConcurrent::run()
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\li Derive a class from QRunnable and run it in the global thread
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pool with QThreadPool::globalInstance()->start()
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\li Derive a class from QThread, reimplement the QThread::run()
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method and use QThread::start() to run it.
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\endlist
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\row
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\li One call
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\li Operations are to be performed on all items of a container.
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Processing should be performed using all available cores. A common
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example is to produce thumbnails from a list of images.
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\li QtConcurrent provides the \l{QtConcurrent::}{map()} function for
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applying operations on every container element,
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\l{QtConcurrent::}{filter()} for selecting container elements, and
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the option of specifying a reduce function for combining the
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remaining elements.
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\row
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\li One call
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\li A long running operation has to be put in another thread. During the
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course of processing, status information should be sent to the GUI
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thread.
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\li Use QThread, reimplement run and emit signals as needed. Connect the
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signals to the GUI thread's slots using queued signal/slot
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connections.
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\row
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\li Permanent
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\li Have an object living in another thread and let it perform different
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tasks upon request.
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This means communication to and from the worker thread is required.
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\li Derive a class from QObject and implement the necessary slots and
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signals, move the object to a thread with a running event loop and
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communicate with the object over queued signal/slot connections.
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\row
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\li Permanent
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\li Have an object living in another thread, let the object perform
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repeated tasks such as polling a port and enable communication with
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the GUI thread.
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\li Same as above but also use a timer in the worker thread to implement
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polling. However, the best solution for polling is to avoid it
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completely. Sometimes using QSocketNotifier is an alternative.
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\endtable
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See the \l{Multithreading Technologies in Qt} page for an introduction to the
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different approaches to multithreading to Qt, and for guidelines on how to
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choose among them.
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\section1 Qt Thread Basics
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@ -178,7 +178,14 @@
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See the \l{Qt Concurrent} module documentation for details on the individual functions.
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\section1 Comparison of Solutions
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\section1 Choosing an Appropriate Approach
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As demonstrated above, Qt provides different solutions for developing threaded
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applications. The right solution for a given application depends on the purpose
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of the new thread and the thread's lifetime. Below is a comparison of Qt's
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threading technologies, followed by recommended solutions for some example use cases.
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\section2 Comparison of Solutions
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\table
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\header
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@ -228,6 +235,53 @@
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\li Yes
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\endtable
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\sup{\e{*Except QtConcurrent::run(), which is like QRunnable}}
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\section2 Example Use Cases
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\table
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\header
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\li Lifetime of thread
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\li Operation
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\li Solution
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\row
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\li One call
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\li Run a linear function within another thread, optionally with progress
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updates during the run.
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\li Qt provides different solutions:
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\list
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\li Place the function in a reimplementation of QThread::run() and
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start the QThread. Emit signals to update progress. OR
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\li Place the function in a reimplementation of QRunnable::run() and
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add the QRunnable to a QThreadPool. Write to a \l{Synchronizing
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Threads}{thread-safe variable} to update progress. OR
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\li Run the function using QtConcurrent::run(). Write to a \l{Synchronizing
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Threads}{thread-safe variable} to update progress.
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\endlist
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\row
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\li One call
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\li Perform an operation on all items of a container, using all available
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cores. For example, producing thumbnails from a list of images.
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\li Use Qt Concurrent's \l{QtConcurrent::}{filter()} function to select
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container elements, and the \l{QtConcurrent::}{map()} function to apply
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an operation to each element. To fold the output into a single result,
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use \l{QtConcurrent::}{filterReduced()} and \l{QtConcurrent::}{mapReduced()}
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instead.
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\row
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\li Permanent
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\li Have an object living in another thread that can perform different
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tasks upon request and/or can receive new data to work with.
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\li Subclass a QObject to create a worker. Instantiate this worker object
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and a QThread. Move the worker to the new thread. Send commands or
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data to the worker object over queued signal-slot connections.
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\row
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\li Permanent
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\li Repeatedly perform an expensive operation in another thread, where the
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thread does not need to receive any signals or events.
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\li Write the infinite loop directly within a reimplementation of QThread::run().
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Start the thread without an event loop. Let the thread emit signals to
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send data back to the GUI thread.
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\endtable
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*/
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/*!
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