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Python-gstreamer, threading and the main loop
by Sander MarechalThis is just a quick heads-up for people who try to use python-gstreamer in a thread. Threading in Python has a few unexpected problems if you're new to it and it took me quite a few hours on Google searching for some scraps of documentation (and even diving into the source) before I got it right.
As it turns out, Python doesn't use Operating System threads but implements it's own threading because of portability, but that threading only works within python. When a thread calls a function that's written in C—such as gobject.run()—then Python freezes all threads until that function returns (unless that C function is wrapped in Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS/Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS statements). This is called Global Interpreter Lock or GIL and is very annoying when using gstreamer because gstreamer relies on some sort of external mainloop to function.
