view docs/html/sdladdtimer.html @ 3069:caefe2344f65

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:38:25 +0000 From: John Bartholomew Subject: [SDL] SDL Semaphore implementation broken on Windows? Hi, Over the past couple of days, I've been battling with SDL, SDL_Mixer and SMPEG to try to find an audio hang bug. I believe I've found the problem, which I think is a race condition inside SDL's semaphore implementation (at least the Windows implementation). The semaphore code uses Windows' built in semaphore functions, but it also maintains a separate count value. This count value is updated with bare increment and decrement operations in SemPost and SemWaitTimeout - no locking primitives to protect them. In tracking down the apparent audio bug, I found that at some point a semaphore's count value was being decremented to -1, which is clearly not a valid value for it to take. I'm still not certain exactly what sequence of operations is occuring for this to happen, but I believe that overall it's a race condition between a thread calling SemPost (which increments the count) and the thread on the other end calling SemWait (which decrements it). I will try to make a test case to verify this, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to (threading errors being difficult to reproduce even in the best circumstances). However, assuming this is the cause of my problems, there is a very simple fix: Windows provides InterlockedIncrement() and InterlockedDecrement() functions to perform increments and decrements which are guaranteed to be atomic. So the fix is in thread/win32/SDL_syssem.c: replace occurrences of --sem->count with InterlockedDecrement(&sem->count); and replace occurrences of ++sem->count with InterlockedIncrement(&sem->count); This is using SDL v1.2.12, built with VC++ 2008 Express, running on a Core 2 duo processor.
author Sam Lantinga <slouken@libsdl.org>
date Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:39:18 +0000
parents 355632dca928
children
line wrap: on
line source

<HTML
><HEAD
><TITLE
>SDL_AddTimer</TITLE
><META
NAME="GENERATOR"
CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.76b+
"><LINK
REL="HOME"
TITLE="SDL Library Documentation"
HREF="index.html"><LINK
REL="UP"
TITLE="Time"
HREF="time.html"><LINK
REL="PREVIOUS"
TITLE="SDL_Delay"
HREF="sdldelay.html"><LINK
REL="NEXT"
TITLE="SDL_RemoveTimer"
HREF="sdlremovetimer.html"></HEAD
><BODY
CLASS="REFENTRY"
BGCOLOR="#FFF8DC"
TEXT="#000000"
LINK="#0000ee"
VLINK="#551a8b"
ALINK="#ff0000"
><DIV
CLASS="NAVHEADER"
><TABLE
SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
WIDTH="100%"
BORDER="0"
CELLPADDING="0"
CELLSPACING="0"
><TR
><TH
COLSPAN="3"
ALIGN="center"
>SDL Library Documentation</TH
></TR
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="10%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="bottom"
><A
HREF="sdldelay.html"
ACCESSKEY="P"
>Prev</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="80%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="bottom"
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="10%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="bottom"
><A
HREF="sdlremovetimer.html"
ACCESSKEY="N"
>Next</A
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
><HR
ALIGN="LEFT"
WIDTH="100%"></DIV
><H1
><A
NAME="SDLADDTIMER"
></A
>SDL_AddTimer</H1
><DIV
CLASS="REFNAMEDIV"
><A
NAME="AEN8482"
></A
><H2
>Name</H2
>SDL_AddTimer&nbsp;--&nbsp;Add a timer which will call a callback after the specified number of milliseconds has
elapsed.</DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSYNOPSISDIV"
><A
NAME="AEN8485"
></A
><H2
>Synopsis</H2
><DIV
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSIS"
><A
NAME="AEN8486"
></A
><P
></P
><PRE
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSISINFO"
>#include "SDL.h"</PRE
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>SDL_TimerID <B
CLASS="FSFUNC"
>SDL_AddTimer</B
></CODE
>(Uint32 interval, SDL_NewTimerCallback callback, void *param);</CODE
></P
><P
></P
></DIV
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="SDLNEWTIMERCALLBACK"
></A
><H2
>Callback</H2
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>/* type definition for the "new" timer callback function */
typedef Uint32 (*SDL_NewTimerCallback)(Uint32 interval, void *param);</PRE
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8495"
></A
><H2
>Description</H2
><P
>Adds a callback function to be run after the specified number of
milliseconds has elapsed. The callback function is passed the current
timer interval and the user supplied parameter from the
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_AddTimer</TT
> call and returns the next timer
interval. If the returned value from the callback is the same as the one
passed in, the periodic alarm continues, otherwise a new alarm is
scheduled.</P
><P
>To cancel a currently running timer call
<A
HREF="sdlremovetimer.html"
>SDL_RemoveTimer</A
> with the
timer ID returned from
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_AddTimer</TT
>.</P
><P
>The timer callback function may run in a different thread than your
main program, and so shouldn't call any functions from within itself.
You may always call <A
HREF="sdlpushevent.html"
>SDL_PushEvent</A
>, however.</P
><P
>The granularity of the timer is platform-dependent, but you should count
on it being at least 10 ms as this is the most common number.
This means that if
you request a 16 ms timer, your callback will run approximately 20 ms
later on an unloaded system.  If you wanted to set a flag signaling
a frame update at 30 frames per second (every 33 ms), you might set a
timer for 30 ms (see example below).

If you use this function, you need to pass <TT
CLASS="LITERAL"
>SDL_INIT_TIMER</TT
>
to <A
HREF="sdlinit.html"
>SDL_Init</A
>.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8507"
></A
><H2
>Return Value</H2
><P
>Returns an ID value for the added timer or
<SPAN
CLASS="RETURNVALUE"
>NULL</SPAN
> if there was an error.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8511"
></A
><H2
>Examples</H2
><P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>my_timer_id = SDL_AddTimer((33/10)*10, my_callbackfunc, my_callback_param);</PRE
></P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8515"
></A
><H2
>See Also</H2
><P
><A
HREF="sdlremovetimer.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_RemoveTimer</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdlpushevent.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_PushEvent</TT
></A
></P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
><HR
ALIGN="LEFT"
WIDTH="100%"><TABLE
SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
WIDTH="100%"
BORDER="0"
CELLPADDING="0"
CELLSPACING="0"
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="sdldelay.html"
ACCESSKEY="P"
>Prev</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="34%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="index.html"
ACCESSKEY="H"
>Home</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="sdlremovetimer.html"
ACCESSKEY="N"
>Next</A
></TD
></TR
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="top"
>SDL_Delay</TD
><TD
WIDTH="34%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="time.html"
ACCESSKEY="U"
>Up</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="top"
>SDL_RemoveTimer</TD
></TR
></TABLE
></DIV
></BODY
></HTML
>