Class: AbstractBackgroundJob

• Inheritance
• Description
• Related information
• Class protocol
  • instance creation
  • queries
• Instance protocol
  • accessing
  • initialization
  • private
  • processing
  • queries
  • start & stop

Inheritance:

   Object
   |
   +--AbstractBackgroundJob
      |
      +--BackgroundJob
      |
      +--BackgroundPeriodicalJob
      |
      +--BackgroundQueueProcessingJob

Package:

stx:libbasic2

Category:

System-Support

Version:

rev: 1.5 date: 2017/02/10 10:22:15

user: cg

file: AbstractBackgroundJob.st directory: libbasic2

module: stx stc-classLibrary: libbasic2

Author:

Jan Vrany <jan.vrany@fit.cvut.cz>

Description:

Ab AbstractBackgroundJob is a base superclass for any kind of background
processing job. Possible uses include (but not limited to): 
copying files, syntax higlighting, live searching, autosave, etc.

See subclasses for various form of background processing.

A task to be processed in a background is given to instances
in a form of a block or a message send. The background task must 
be then started by sending a #start message to the instance of 
the job. A job may be restarted any time by sending #restart or
terminated by sending #stop. Sending #start to already started
job does nothing.

Implementation note: 
The the task is actually processed in a separate, exclusive    
worker thread, so an explicit synchronization have to
be done iff the task accesses possibly shared data. 
The worker exists only iff the job is actually running. When 
the task is finished, worker thread terminates.


[instance variables:]
    name    <String|nil>            A user friendly name of a job,
                                    useful for identifing job's thread in
                                    process list.
    job     <Block|MessageSend>     A task to perform in background.
    priority<Integer>               A priority of worker thread. Defaults to
                                    Processor userBackgroundPriority.
    thread  <Process|nil>           The worker thread
    running <Boolean>               Boolean value indicating whether
                                    tasks already started or not.

Related information:

    BackgroundJob
    BackgroundQueueProcessingJob
    BackgroundPeriodicalJob
    Tools::CodeHighlightingService
    (uses
    this
    class)

Class protocol:

 named: name

 named: name on: block

 new

return an initialized instance

 on: block

 isAbstract

Return if this class is an abstract class.
True is returned here for myself only; false for subclasses.
Abstract subclasses must redefine this again.

Instance protocol:

 initiatingThread

 initiatingThread: something

 isDebuggerJob

 isDebuggerJob: aBoolean

added to allow suppression of breakpoints/halts of a
job started by the debugger
(if you ask what this is for,
try to put a breakpoint into the syntaxhighlighter in the old schema)

 job

 job: aBlockOrMessageSend

Sets the job to be done. The job is sent
#value from the worker thread once started

 name

 name: aString

 priority

 priority: anInteger

Set the priority of a worker thread

 thread

Return the thread (an instance of Process) that currently
processes the job or nil. if no processing is currently performed.

 initialize

super initialize. -- commented since inherited method does nothing

 setupThread: t priority: p

Sets up worker thread

 process

Actually perform the job. This method is called from the background worker thread

** This method raises an error - it must be redefined in concrete classes **

 running

Return true if the job is actually running, i.e., if it
is actually computing a value, contrary to #scheduled, that
returns true even if computation actually did not start
(i.e., thread is created but was not scheduled so far)

 scheduled

Return true, if the job has been already started

 abort

Abort the job, if it is running. Similar to #stop, but raises
abort operation request so the job has a chance to terminate
gracefully

 restart

 start

 startWithPriority: prio

 stop

raise its prio to make it terminate quickly