Is Love.update reentrant?

[MrEricSir]

Is the Love.update() function assumed to be reentrant? Is it possible for this function to be called from multiple threads?

I ask because in the binary module I'm developing I have a function getting called from every Love.update(). There was a bug that I fixed more or less by accident when I added a reentrancy guard.

I'm running Love 0.7.2 on Ubuntu Natty, if that helps.

[miko]

Is the Love.update() function assumed to be reentrant? Is it possible for this function to be called from multiple threads?

love.update() is assumed to be global singleton - it updates the state of the program, so every frame you call it just once. This is the design decision to help you as a programmer write better code.
Threads, OTOH, are meant as a helper workers for doing cpu-intensive tasks without slowing down the main thread (which means GUI - ie, how fast the program responds to user input). Read more about threads here:
http://love2d.org/wiki/love.thread

I ask because in the binary module I'm developing I have a function getting called from every Love.update(). There was a bug that I fixed more or less by accident when I added a reentrancy guard.

I'm running Love 0.7.2 on Ubuntu Natty, if that helps.

You can do it, but it is against a good practice. Following this way is asking for troubles. So in short: don't do that.

[slime]

love.update is a function that by default gets called once per frame by LÖVE, if it has been defined by you. Every thread is a separate instance of Lua which doesn't contain the main loop by default, so you can't technically call love.update from multiple threads, besides writing a separate loop and love.update function for each thread.

[MrEricSir]

Guess I wasn't very clear with my original question... I'm not asking if I should call Love.update(); I'm not that crazy!

Rather I want to know if there's ever a case where Love itself will call Love.update() from outside the main thread and/or concurrently from the same thread (main or otherwise.)

[TechnoCat]

Guess I wasn't very clear with my original question... I'm not asking if I should call Love.update(); I'm not that crazy!

Rather I want to know if there's ever a case where Love itself will call Love.update() from outside the main thread and/or concurrently from the same thread (main or otherwise.)

Maybe this will interest you? love.run

[T-Bone]

Guess I wasn't very clear with my original question... I'm not asking if I should call Love.update(); I'm not that crazy!

Rather I want to know if there's ever a case where Love itself will call Love.update() from outside the main thread and/or concurrently from the same thread (main or otherwise.)

I believe it's called from the "main thread" (from love.run(), that is). If you want to change the flow, overwrite love.run().

[bartbes]

Since nobody seems to have noticed slime's post, I shall redirect you there, he's right.
Another thread can't call love.update, because it doesn't exist there.

[MrEricSir]

Since nobody seems to have noticed slime's post, I shall redirect you there, he's right.
Another thread can't call love.update, because it doesn't exist there.

I realize that another Lua thread can't call love.update, but I imagine Love itself could do such a thing.

At some point I'm going to have to bust out GDB and see if the call to love.update ended up on the callstack twice somehow.

[slime]

Since nobody seems to have noticed slime's post, I shall redirect you there, he's right.
Another thread can't call love.update, because it doesn't exist there.

I realize that another Lua thread can't call love.update, but I imagine Love itself could do such a thing.

At some point I'm going to have to bust out GDB and see if the call to love.update ended up on the callstack twice somehow.

The C++ side of LÖVE doesn't know about love.update, it's defined by you in Lua and purely called in Lua by love.run (which you can override if you want).

[MrEricSir]

Okay, I'm starting to think this problem has got to be in my own code then.

Another question though: where's the Lua code for love.run on the repo? I wasn't able to find it.