Re: [Adonthell-devel] Redesign?

[Kenneth Gangstoe]

Haven't followed this thread closely, so I have no idea if this is
even remotely interesting :) But in ClanLib we solved the initialization
problems without using any hacks. Read more here:

http://www.clanlib.org/ClanLib-0.7.cgi/Overview/getting_started.html

- Kenneth

Quoting Kai Sterker (address@hidden):
> Hi folks,
> 
> I am wondering whether we might have to change Adonthell's startup 
> mechanism a little, to allow the OS X target (and possibly others) to 
> work. Here is, how SDL on OS X does work:
> 
> * Replace the application's main method with it's own via preprocessor 
> magic
> * In there, create a new NSApplication
> * Start that application's main loop
> * From within a callback that indicates that the main loop has just 
> started, the application's actual main function is called.
> 
> That means, everything required to have an SDL app running natively on 
> OS X happens before a single line of code of that app is executed. Once 
> the app is finished, SDL quits the whole program. Thus, the two 
> important lines from the callback above are:
> 
>     /* Hand off to main application code */
>     status = SDL_main (gArgc, gArgv);
> 
>     /* We're done, thank you for playing */
>     exit(status);
> }
> 
> I hope you can see why we are getting some difficulties here. Before 
> initializing SDL Video, the OS X specific initialization has to take 
> place. Obviously, this should happen just when the sdl gfx backend is 
> loaded.
> 
> However, we expect the gfx::init method to return after doing it's job. 
> However, that means we cannot start the NSApplication main loop, 
> otherwise we would only return after that loop is done. But the loop 
> has to be started for things to work smoothly.
> 
> So I am wondering whether it would be possible to make the graphics 
> stuff the last bit that should get initialized. That way, we could 
> directly jump to Adonthell's own "main loop" from there, which would 
> run as long as Adonthell is running. Since this loop would be different 
> for different editors and test scripts, etc., it could actually just a 
> small class that holds a callback that implements the actual loop. So 
> we had something like the following:
> 
> * register the app's main loop
> * init all backends, gfx last
> * gfx backend automatically starts main loop
> * once main loop is done, gfx backend is automatically cleaned up
> * this returns us to the main method, where the other backends can be 
> cleaned up
> 
> 
> So the question is: if I would try such a design on OS X and it would 
> work, could we stick to that then? It's a bit more akward than the 
> current implementation, but I see no other way right now.
> 
> Kai
> 
> 
> 
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