• Eric Wong's avatar
    Initial cut of fork() => pthreads() for decoder and player · 9cf66d0e
    Eric Wong authored
    I initially started to do a heavy rewrite that changed the way processes
    communicated, but that was too much to do at once.  So this change only
    focuses on replacing the player and decode processes with threads and
    using condition variables instead of polling in loops; so the changeset
    itself is quiet small.
    
    * The shared output buffer variables will still need locking
    to guard against race conditions.  So in this effect, we're probably
    just as buggy as before.  The reduced context-switching overhead of
    using threads instead of processes may even make bugs show up more or
    less often...
    
    * Basic functionality appears to be working for playing local (and NFS)
    audio, including:
    play, pause, stop, seek, previous, next, and main playlist editing
    
    * I haven't tested HTTP streams yet, they should work.
    
    * I've only tested ALSA and Icecast.  ALSA works fine, Icecast
    metadata seems to get screwy at times and breaks song
    advancement in the playlist at times.
    
    * state file loading works, too (after some last-minute hacks with
    non-blocking wakeup functions)
    
    * The non-blocking (*_nb) variants of the task management functions are
    probably overused.  They're more lenient and easier to use because
    much of our code is still based on our previous polling-based system.
    
    * It currently segfaults on exit.  I haven't paid much attention
    to the exit/signal-handling routines other than ensuring it
    compiles.  At least the state file seems to work.  We don't
    do any cleanups of the threads on exit, yet.
    
    * Update is still done in a child process and not in a thread.
    To do this in a thread, we'll need to ensure it does proper
    locking and communication with the main thread; but should
    require less memory in the end because we'll be updating
    the database "in-place" rather than updating a copy and
    then bulk-loading when done.
    
    * We're more sensitive to bugs in 3rd party libraries now.
    My plan is to eventually use a master process which forks()
    and restarts the child when it dies:
    locking and communication with the main thread; but should
    require less memory in the end because we'll be updating
    the database "in-place" rather than updating a copy and
    then bulk-loading when done.
    
    * We're more sensitive to bugs in 3rd party libraries now.
    My plan is to eventually use a master process which forks()
    and restarts the child when it dies:
    
    master - just does waitpid() + fork() in a loop
    \- main thread
    \- decoder thread
    \- player thread
    
    At the beginning of every song, the main thread will set
    a dirty flag and update the state file.  This way, if we
    encounter a song that triggers a segfault killing the
    main thread, the master will start the replacement main
    on the next song.
    
    * The main thread still wakes up every second on select()
    to check for signals; which affects power management.
    
    [merged r7138 from branches/ew]
    
    git-svn-id: https://svn.musicpd.org/mpd/trunk@7240 09075e82-0dd4-0310-85a5-a0d7c8717e4f
    9cf66d0e
oggflac_plugin.c 11.3 KB