Xamarin.Forms Background Thread

Question

I'm trying to get a really simple application running listing google Task. I have a SQLite local db I'd like to sync / try syncing at regular interval with Google's server.

I was thinking of simply running a simple background thread so it'd work easily on all devices.

Problem comes down creating that background thread in a PCL project (Xamarin.Forms) I can't seem to find a proper way of making one.

Currently I just have a second thread running as such:

    private bool Sync() { //Does stuffs }

    private void SynchronizeData()
    {
        // Repeats sync process every 35s
        Device.StartTimer (new TimeSpan (0, 0, 35), Sync);
    }

    // Is called pretty much when app starts.
    private void StartSynchronizationThread()
    {
        Task.Factory.StartNew(SynchronizeData, 
            CancellationToken.None, TaskCreationOptions.DenyChildAttach, TaskScheduler.Default);
    }

While it should anyway not be much of a problem considering operation count is really low (worst case for testing purpose it'd be less than a sec blocking) i experience a massive freeze of my application around when thread should be ran first. (Timer expiring for the first time) The freeze last for a good minute...

Once it hapenned, i can stay on the app mostly forever without a single issue. I noticed the following appears quite later though:

[art] Thread[2,tid=2532,WaitingInMainSignalCatcherLoop,Thread*=0xee170800,peer=0x12c00080,"Signal Catcher"]: reacting to signal 3 [art] Wrote stack traces to '/data/anr/traces.txt' [art] Wrote stack traces to '/data/anr/traces.txt' [art] Thread[2,tid=2532,WaitingInMainSignalCatcherLoop,Thread*=0xee170800,peer=0x12c00080,"Signal Catcher"]: reacting to signal 3 [art] Wrote stack traces to '/data/anr/traces.txt'

Traces aren't really giving me much more informations though... But it probably have to do with it.

As anyone a hint regarding this matter ? Package, code example or anything ? Hopefully I missed out on something big e;

Thanks.

Answer 1

Working like a charm on an actual device, the issue was linked to the emulator. (Haven't found a fix for it though)