Writing and debugging such tests is always an interesting challenge...
Fortunately this exercise didn't unveil any problem in the newly written
code, only some insidious problems in the test fixture itself. Which
again highlights the necessity, that each *command instance* needs
to be an independent clone from the original *command prototype*,
since argument binding messages and trigger messages can appear
in arbitrary order.
This is a little bit of functionality needed again and again;
first I thought to use the TypedCounter, but this would be overkill,
since we do not actually need different instances, and we do not need
to select by type when incrementing the counter. In fact, we do not
even need anything beyond just allocating a number.
So I made a new class, which can be used RAII style
the intention is to cover more of the full invocation path,
without running all of the application infrastructure. So this
second test cases simulates how messages are handled in CoreService,
where the CommandHandler (visitor) actually invokes the SessionCommand
facade
this was a spin-off activity from writing the SessionCommand
function(integration) test, where I noted that we can't just
capture "a time value" as command memento
basically this is not necessary, since the compiler figures out
to use the conversion to target type when attempting to resolve
an equality comparison. But it helps to avoid ambiguities in cases
where several conversion paths do exist, e.g. when comparing string
with C-string
explicitly observed with the debugger that the call path is sane;
the code looks innocuous, but it is quite magic how the compiler
picks precisely the right ctors and inserts conversions apropriately
command processing against the session is not yet implemented,
so to allow for unit testing, we magically recognise all commands
starting with "test." and invoke them directly within the Dispatcher.
With this addition, the basic functionality of the dispatcher works now
need also to start and stop the interface registry,
since by policy we do not run the application framework itself
for execution of the test suite; thus if some test actually needs
an application service, it must be started/stopped manually
From a purely logical viewpoint, it looked sensible to require an actual
value for an offset, especially since our time values are immutable.
But this has the unfortunate consequence that we'd be unable to use
an offset value as parameter for any command, since we store the arguments
as tuple and the tuple type has a default constructor. We might be able
to get around that problem, but such looks brittle to me; it is just
plain surprising for anyone not familiar with the internals of the
command system.
For that reason, I've now added a default ctor to the Offset type
not quite sure how to get the design straight.
Also a bit concerned because we'll get this much indirections;
the approach to send invocations via the UI-Bus needs to prove its viability
...since the session loop will be notified on any change via the
interface, adding a command will activate the loop, and the builder
timeout is handled separately via the dirty state. So there is no
need to spin around the loop in idle state.
As a aside, timeout waiting on a condition variable can be intentional
and should thus not be logged as an error automatically. It is up to the
calling context to decide if a timeout constitutes an exceptional situation.
It is always a trade-off performance vs. readability.
Sometimes a single-threaded implementation of self-contained logic
is preferable to a slightly more performant yet obscure implementation
based on our threadpool and scheduler.
Did a full review of state and locking logic, seems airtight now.
- command processing itself is unimplemented, we log a TODO message for now
- likewise, builder is not implemented
- need to add the deadlock safeguard #1054
Due to object scoping we can conclude reliably that the only one
ever to delete the DispacherLoop object will be the the loop thread
from within this object itself, when invoking the termination callback.
Btw, the lock on the inner object was insufficient and will be
replaced by taking the outer lock
We found out that it's best to run it single threaded
within the session loop thread. This does not mean the Builder
itself is necessarily single threaded, but the Builder's top level
will block any other session operation, and this is a good thing.
For this reason it makes more sense to have the Builder integrated
as a component into the session subsystem.
It turns out we *do* support the use of anonymous commands
(while it is not clear yet if we really need this feature).
Basically, client code may either create and register a new
instance from another command used as prototype, by invoking
Command::storeDef(ID). Or, alternatively it may just invoke
newInstance() on the command, which creates a new handle
and a valid new implementation (managed by the handle as
smart-ptr), but never stores this implementation into the
CommandRegistry. In that case, client code may use such a
command just fine, as long as it cares to hold onto that
handle; but it is not possible to retrieve this command
instance later by symbolic ID.
In the light of this (possible) usage pattern, it doesn't
make sense to throw when accessing a command-ID. Rather, we
now return a placeholder-Symbol ("_anonymous_")
And yes, this warning is for real, while the compiler has no way
to decide if there is actual danger lurking. A type with internal
linkage (e.g. defined in an anonymous namespace) will be treated
by the linker as a separate entity on each encounter (i.e. in
each distinct compilation unit). When multiple translation units
start collaborating on such a type, they *might* be referring
to different memory locations, while semantically the intention
is to refer to the same location.
And since we're dealing with a library facility here, *we* have
likewise now power to ensure proper usage, so we better be cautious.
after reading some related code, I am leaning towards a design
to mirror the way command messages are sent over the UI-Bus.
Unfortunately this pretty much abandons the possibility to
invoke these operations from a client written in C or any
other hand made language binding. Which pretty much confirms
my initial reservation towards such an excessively open
and generic interface system.
