QThread: add static create function

In the spirit of std::thread, which takes a function to call and its
parameters, and runs it in a new thread. Since the user might want to
connect to signals, move QObjects into the new thread, etc., the new
thread is not immediately started.

Although technically all of this _should_ be implementable in pure
C++11, there is nothing in the Standard to help us not reinvent all the
plumbing: packing the decay'd parameters, storing them, invoking the
function over the parameters (honoring INVOKE/std::invoke semantics).
std::function does not do the job, as it's copiable and therefore does
not support move-only functors; std::bind does not have INVOKE
semantics.

I certainly do not want to reimplement all the required facilities
inside of Qt. Therefore, the full blown implementation requires C++17
(std::invoke).

In order to make this useful also in pre-C++17, there are two additional
implementations (C++11 and C++14) that support just a callable, without
any arguments passed to it. The C++11 implementation makes use of a
class to store and call the callable (even move-only ones); basically,
it's what a closure type for a C++14 lambda would look like.

An alternative implementation could've used some of the existing
facilities inside QObject::connect implementation that store a functor
(for the connect() overload connecting to free functions), namely:
the QtPrivate::QFunctorSlotObject class. However:

* QFunctorSlotObject does not support move-only callables (see
QTBUG-60339);
* QFunctorSlotObject itself is not a callable (apparently by design),
and requires to be wrapped in a lambda that calls call() on it;
* the moment QTBUG-60339 is solved, we'd need the same handwritten
closure to keep QFunctorSlotObject working with move-only callabes.

So: just use the handwritten one.

The C++14 implementation is a simplified version of the C++11 one,
actually using a generalized lambda capture (corresponding to the
handwritten C++11 closure type).

All three implementations use std::async (with a deferred launch policy,
a nice use case for it!) under the hood. It's certainly an overkill for
our use case, as we don't need the std::future, but at least std::async
does all the plumbing for us.

[ChangeLog][QtCore][QThread] Added the QThread::create function.

Change-Id: I339d0be6f689df7d56766839baebda0aa2f7e94c
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions