Re: Passing variables up to the GUI

[John W. Eaton]

On 04/14/2013 06:17 PM, Michael Goffioul wrote:

> We can stop the discussion here and agree to disagree. But I believe
> that passing octave_value objects across threads (through Qt signal/slot
> or whatever else mechanism) can lead to unpredictable results due to the
> non-thread-safe nature of refcount management. Once that problem is
> solved, then I fully agree that all your suggestions make sense: that
> is, Qt will hold a reference to the passed object until the slot
> execution is completed, and the emitter can safely discard its own
> reference.

I'm willing to reconsider enabling atomic refcount by default.  But I 
think we should still have an option to disable it.  And if it is 
disabled, to also disable the GUI.  But I'd like to postpone any 
decision about this until later.  My goals right now are to get a 
working version of the GUI release as soon as we can.  It doesn't have 
to be perfect, but it has to be reasonably good.

I can see that the octave_link class is not always the most convenient 
thing to do, but it seems to be working.  And I'd rather not waste time 
right now arguing about ways to completely redesign the way the GUI 
communicates with the interpreter.  That will just delay the release 
more, and I think further delay will be worse than using an imperfect 
method of passing data between the interpreter and the GUI.

So can we please stop arguing about this now?

jwe