diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/src/porting/qt4-threads.qdoc')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/src/porting/qt4-threads.qdoc | 101 |
1 files changed, 101 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/src/porting/qt4-threads.qdoc b/doc/src/porting/qt4-threads.qdoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..1800d6a5ee --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/src/porting/qt4-threads.qdoc @@ -0,0 +1,101 @@ +/**************************************************************************** +** +** Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). +** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com) +** +** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit. +** +** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$ +** No Commercial Usage +** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed. +** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions +** contained in the either Technology Preview License Agreement or the +** Beta Release License Agreement. +** +** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage +** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser +** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software +** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the +** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to +** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements +** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html. +** +** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain +** additional rights. These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL +** Exception version 1.0, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this +** package. +** +** GNU General Public License Usage +** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU +** General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software +** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the +** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to +** ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be +** met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. +** +** If you are unsure which license is appropriate for your use, please +** contact the sales department at http://qt.nokia.com/contact. +** $QT_END_LICENSE$ +** +****************************************************************************/ + +/*! + \page qt4-threads.html + \title Thread Support in Qt 4 + + \contentspage {What's New in Qt 4}{Home} + \previouspage The Qt 4 Style API + + Qt 4 makes it easier than ever to write multithreaded + applications. More classes have been made usable from non-GUI + threads, and the signals and slots mechanism can now be used to + communicate between threads. + + \section1 General Overview + + QThread now inherits QObject. It emits signals to indicate that + the thread started or finished executing, and provides a few + slots as well. + + Each thread can now have its own event loop. The initial thread + starts its event loops using QCoreApplication::exec(); other + threads can start an event loop using QThread::exec(). Like + QCoreApplication, QThread also provides an + \l{QThread::exit()}{exit(int)} function and a + \l{QThread::quit()}{quit()} slot. + + An event loop in a thread makes it possible for the thread to use + certain non-GUI Qt classes that require the presence of an event + loop (such as QTimer, QTcpSocket, and QProcess). It also makes it + possible to connect signals from any threads to slots of a + specific thread. When a signal is emitted, the slot isn't called + immediately; instead, it is invoked when control returns to the + event loop of the thread to which the object belongs. The slot is + executed in the thread where the receiver object lives. See + QObject::connect() for details. + + Qt 4 also introduces a new synchronization class: QReadWriteLock. + It is similar to QMutex, except that it distinguishes between + "read" and "write" access to shared data and allows multiple + readers to access the data simultaneously. Using QReadWriteLock + instead of QMutex when it is possible can make multithreaded + programs more concurrent. + + Since Qt 4, \l{implicitly shared} classes can safely be copied + across threads, like any other value classes. They are fully + reentrant. This is implemented using atomic reference counting + operations, which are implemented in assembly language for the + different platforms supported by Qt. Atomic reference counting is + very fast, much faster than using a mutex. + + See \l{Thread Support in Qt} for more information. + + \section1 Comparison with Qt 3 + + Earlier versions of Qt offered an option to build the library + without thread support. In Qt 4, threads are always enabled. + + Qt 3 had a class called \c QDeepCopy that you could use to take a + deep copy of an implicitly shared object. In Qt 4, the atomic + reference counting makes this class superfluous. +*/ |