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+---
+date: "2003-12-06T09:13:55Z"
+title: Retreat!
+---
+
+<p>
+I give up.  I'm going to disable the parallel feed grabbing in <a
+href='http://www.raggle.org/'>Raggle</a> so we can put out a new
+version.  <a href='http://www.pekdon.net/'>Claes (pekdon)</a> suggested
+I try and rewrite it, but the implementation is already pretty simple.
+Here's a high-level view of how the old non-parallel and new parallel
+feed grabbing stuff works:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>Old Code</b>
+<pre>
+$config['feeds'].each { |feed|
+  # download feed
+}
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>
+<b>New Code</b>
+<pre>
+threads = { }
+$config['feeds'].each { |the_feed|
+  threads[the_feed['url']] = Thread::new(the_feed) { |feed|
+    # download feed
+  }
+
+  thread = threads[the_feed['url']]
+  if thread &amp;&amp; thread.status == 'run' &amp;&amp;
+     !$config['grab_in_parallel']
+    # thread.join            
+  end
+  until Thread::list.size &lt; ($config['max_threads'] || 10)
+    $log.puts 'DEBUG: waiting for threads'
+    sleep 5
+  end
+}
+</pre>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, looking at this code as I'm pasting it, it just occured to me
+that if you have two feeds with the same <acronym title='Uniform
+Resource Locator'>URL</acronym>, you could have two threads trying to
+muck with the feed at the same time.  Wonder if that's what's causing <a
+href='http://www.ruby-lang.org/'>Ruby</a> to freak out.  By the way,
+this is why I <em>really</em> dislike threads.  Not because I'm an
+ignoramus, but because they encourage subtle bugs like this.  Anyway,
+let's see if that fixes our random crash woes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, and before anyone asks, yes, I realize that's not the best
+way to implement the thread capping stuff.  And yes, I realize thread
+pooling would be more efficient.  Right now I'm just trying to get it to
+work reliably, then I'll focus on optimization.
+</p>
+