Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse beginner threading question...

[Russ Rufer <russ@xxxxxxxxxx>]

You should only use the SWT event thread to manipulate your SWT widgets. 
You can invoke a method on the event thread using either 
Display.syncExec(Runnable runnable) or Display.asyncExec(Runnable 
runnable) -- depending on whether you want your background thread to block.

From your MultiPageEditorPart, you should be able to do something like:

Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
   void run () {
      // activities you want to perform in the event thread
   }
};

getSite().getShell().getDisplay().asyncExec(runnable);


Hope that gets you unstuck.

- Russ


Horst Heistermann wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am new to eclipse and I am having a problem with threads. I have 
> created a MultiPageEditorPart
> editor. I have a background thread listening to model changes in my 
> application. I am notified of these changes
> in a non -gui thread. I want to set MultiPageEditorPart as dirty 
> whenever I receive a model change event.
> So I wrote a function like this
>
> public void setEditorModified() {
>       m_bModified = true;
>       if (!super.isDirty()) {
>           firePropertyChange(IEditorPart.PROP_DIRTY);
>       }
>   }
>
>
> This method crashes whenever I call it from the background thread. 
> Below is the error stack. But it is a bit misleading. From the 
> debugger, I can see the issue is with the thread I am calling 
> firePropertyChange() from. Can anyone tell me what is the proper  way 
> to update the dirty state from a background thread. Also, the 
> background thread is not aware of the GUI components it only has a refer.