[kepler-dev] Can "stop" interrupt "initialize()"

[Kevin Ruland]

Edward A. Lee wrote:
> At 08:41 AM 1/30/2006 -0600, Kevin Ruland wrote:
>> Also, if some actor somewhere does do something extremely time 
>> consuming in it's initialize method, there is currently no pleasant 
>> way to interrupt it.  The user can click on the stop button, and it 
>> does appear to have some effect -- that is, it's indentation changes 
>> when pressed -- however, it does not interrupt the processing.  This 
>> behavior could be considered a but itself.  Either the stop button 
>> needs to be disabled until it can do something useful, or it should 
>> stop the workflow regardless of its execution state.
>
> Every Director has a method isStopRequested().
> A long running initialize() method should just call this method
> and abort if it returns true...
>

Edward,

I think I can use this in some kind of spin wait.  What's the easiest 
way for an actor get a handle to it's director?

I did a little digging and noticed that Manager.finish() does a 
notifyAll().  Presumably I could tap into this as well and synchronize 
on the Manager object.  Of course, I need to get my hands on the 
Manager, and there might be a different deadlock situation present.

Thanks much.

Kevin
> I would be circumspect about adding additional phases.
> It could significantly increase the complexity for actor writers.
>
> Edward
>
>
>
> ------------
> Edward A. Lee
> Professor, Chair of the EE Division, Associate Chair of EECS
> 231 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
> phone: 510-642-0253 or 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2845
> eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal