Real-Time Robotics Framework

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====== Thread Safety ======

In EEROS, blocks are basically accessed by multiple threads. EEROS blocks feature thread safety by providing exclusive access to critical memory locations by a mutex. 

Concurrency can not be tested by Google Test framework. Therefore, test executables are needed which can be executed manually or via bash scripts.

To provide an example, a test program testing the Gain block is described below. The full source code is available on GitHub at: https://github.com/eeros-project/eeros-framework/blob/master/examples/devel/multithreading.cpp

===== The problem =====

The following code snipped and image show the issue simulated in the test program. The main thread calls **g1.run()** on the gain object. This method is doing a long calculation. Thread t2 is unfortunately changing the gain by calling **g1.setGain(gM2)** during the main threads calculation. This will finally lead to an unexpected result.  


<code>
Matrix<M,N> gM1;
Matrix<M,N> gM2;

Gain<Matrix<M,N>, Matrix<M,N>,true> g1{gM1};
Constant<Matrix<M,N>> c1{m2};

std::thread t2{[&] {
  g1.setGain(gM2);
}};

g1.run();

Matrix<M,N> res = g1.getOut().getSignal().getValue();

// Note: The above code is simplified for a better understanding. 
</code>


{{:for_developers:concurrencyissue.jpg?800|}}


===== The solution =====

The Gain block is now implemented thread safe by using the class [[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread/lock_guard|lock_guard]] and a [[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread/mutex|mutex]]. The code snipped below shows the **setGain()** method as an example.
 
<code>
virtual void setGain(Tgain c) {
  std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(mtx);
  gain = c;
}
</code>

The test program will not show an unexpected result anymore. To see the unexpected result, the locking mechanism must be removed (//comment std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(mtx);//).