openframeworks / openframeworks/openFrameworks

ofOpenALSoundPlayer uses a thread internally does not appear thread-safe

Open
#1,572 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug code-review core section-sound
Dominant language
C++
Stars
10.4k
Forks
2.6k
Avg merge
1d 21h
Merged PRs (30d)
9

Description

ofOpenALSoundPlayer looks like it ought to have locks around all of its functions. it's using a threadedFunction to handle updating/processing the sound playback streams in a background thread.

although OpenAL is itself thread-safe, our code is not thread safe. for example unloadSound deletes channels and sources but if it does this while threadedFunction() is running so a channel might become invalid halfway through updating it on our side, leading to for example a bad buffer reference being passed to different functions.

also, handling of stream_end is broken. if in the main thread stream_end is assigned true while the threadedFunction is executing code between https://github.com/openframeworks/openFrameworks/blob/master/libs/openFrameworks/sound/ofOpenALSoundPlayer.cpp#L505 and line 520, when line 521 executes the value of stream_end is assigned back to false and the stream will not end.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in libs/openFrameworks/sound/ofOpenALSoundPlayer.cpp, especially threadedFunction() and the code around lines 505–521, then inspect unloadSound and related playback functions. Reproduce or reason through concurrent stream updates and unloading; done means shared state remains consistent and stream_end is not incorrectly cleared during background processing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
audio-video-rtc
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.