thread_init callback is called multiple times

[HadrienG2]

Not sure why...

[wmedrano]

Thanks for filing the issue. I observed this on my system using libjack2. I'm not sure what happens for libjack.

The crate's documentation says it should be called only once, but this was just copied from the JACK API Docs: http://jackaudio.org/files/docs/html/group__ClientCallbacks.html#gad5a6904292f5c9790223c18aeab202bf

I'm not sure what the proper behavior is, but the issue should be reported to the JACK developers.

[HadrienG2]

Oh, wait, I think I got it.

One headliner feature of jack2, which I also use, is that it supports multiple audio processing threads. What I did not realize is that for process isolation reasons, it may actually need to spawn multiple audio threads per client in order to achieve this result.

If that is the issue, then it's just a matter of clarifying the thread_init_callback documentation.

EDIT: And indeed, on my machine, printing std::thread::current().id() in the thread_init callback yields

Audio thread ThreadId(2) is ready.
Audio thread ThreadId(3) is ready.
Audio thread ThreadId(4) is ready.

[HadrienG2]

Note that if there are multiple audio threads and they can work concurrently, some aspects of the jack-rs API may need to change towards multi-thread-safety. For example, NotificationHandler and ProcessHandler would likely need to become Sync.

[wmedrano]

Since JACK can have many implementations (and has 2) we should follow the spec. Since the spec is not specific on this, we can't make guarantees about future implementations so its safer to require Sync.

We should also update the example to use crossbeam::channel for communication since std channels are not Sync on the receiver side.

[piegamesde]

Requiring Sync is pretty bad, since it breaks all stateful process handlers (using Arc is not an option because its spinlocks are not thread safe). Is it really possible to call the processing callback not only from different threads, but concurrently? If I understand https://github.com/jackaudio/jackaudio.github.com/wiki/WalkThrough_User_ClientThreads correctly, there are only 2 threads, one for notifications and one for processing (btw the link to the documentation above is broken)

[HadrienG2]

using Arc is not an option because its spinlocks are not thread safe

Can you clarify what you mean by that ?

If I understand https://github.com/jackaudio/jackaudio.github.com/wiki/WalkThrough_User_ClientThreads correctly, there are only 2 threads, one for notifications and one for processing (btw the link to the documentation above is broken)

This is indeed consistent with one of the last footnotes at the end of this jack1 vs jack2 comparison, but not with the fact that my thread_init_callback was called from three different threads above. Not sure what to make of all this honestly, it would be great if a jack2 dev could clarify the situation here.

[piegamesde]

* using Arc is not an option because its blocking wait is not realtime thread safe

But never mind that, I just found out that Mutex has a non-blocking try_lock which works in a RT context.