[Pan-devel] Ya know Pan2 is really single threaded, right?

[Calin A. Culianu]

Why does pan2 ever create a threadpool?  It's actually single-threaded!

I discovered this because UUDecoding attachements led to pan2 stalling 
completely (the UI was frozen too -- the whole app was stuck inside 
UUDecodeFile()).  This is because pan2 does all its task processing from 
the main thread's idle loop!

The other 4 threads that are created are only briefly used to create a 
socket connection to the nntp server, then the actual handshaking and 
logging-in is handled from the main thread's idle loop!

Furthermore, any and all nntp stuff happens in the main thread.  Sure, 
there are 4 task contexts that keep getting shuffled around, but basically 
only 1 task at a time ever runs, and it runs in the main thread.

Meanwhile, you have this perfectly lovely thread pool sitting there 
twiddling its thumbs.

Is this intentional?

I think I know how to fix this.

Are you guys open to accepting patches?

My gripe with this for the most part is that UUDecode() of large binaries 
(sometimes a single attachment can be 50mb) stalls the whole app and leads 
to poor network utilization overall.

-Calin