How would you implement a basic event-loop?

Question

If you have worked with gui toolkits, you know that there is a event-loop/main-loop that should be executed after everything is done, and that will keep the application alive and responsive to different events. For example, for Qt, you would do this in main():

int main() {
    QApplication app(argc, argv);
    // init code
    return app.exec();
}

Which in this case, app.exec() is the application's main-loop.

The obvious way to implement this kind of loop would be:

void exec() {
    while (1) {
        process_events(); // create a thread for each new event (possibly?)
    }
}

But this caps the CPU to 100% and is practicaly useless. Now, how can I implement such an event loop that is responsive without eating the CPU altogether?

Answers are appreciated in Python and/or C++. Thanks.

Footnote: For the sake of learning, I will implement my own signals/slots, and I would use those to generate custom events (e.g. go_forward_event(steps)). But if you know how I can use system events manually, I would like to know about that too.

Answer 1

I used to wonder a lot about the same!

A GUI main loop looks like this, in pseudo-code:

void App::exec() {
    for(;;) {
        vector<Waitable> waitables;
        waitables.push_back(m_networkSocket);
        waitables.push_back(m_xConnection);
        waitables.push_back(m_globalTimer);
        Waitable* whatHappened = System::waitOnAll(waitables);
        switch(whatHappened) {
            case &m_networkSocket: readAndDispatchNetworkEvent(); break;
            case &m_xConnection: readAndDispatchGuiEvent(); break;
            case &m_globalTimer: readAndDispatchTimerEvent(); break;
        }
    }
}

What is a "Waitable"? Well, it's system dependant. On UNIX it's called a "file descriptor" and "waitOnAll" is the ::select system call. The so-called vector<Waitable> is a ::fd_set on UNIX, and "whatHappened" is actually queried via FD_ISSET. The actual waitable-handles are acquired in various ways, for example m_xConnection can be taken from ::XConnectionNumber(). X11 also provides a high-level, portable API for this -- ::XNextEvent() -- but if you were to use that, you wouldn't be able to wait on several event sources simultaneously.

How does the blocking work? "waitOnAll" is a syscall that tells the OS to put your process on a "sleep list". This means you are not given any CPU time until an event occurs on one of the waitables. This, then, means your process is idle, consuming 0% CPU. When an event occurs, your process will briefly react to it and then return to idle state. GUI apps spend almost all their time idling.

What happens to all the CPU cycles while you're sleeping? Depends. Sometimes another process will have a use for them. If not, your OS will busy-loop the CPU, or put it into temporary low-power mode, etc.

Please ask for further details!