start_process() and memory access issues

Accessing global variables from a separate thread will cause nondeterministic behavior if not synchronized. Basically, one thread is writing to a variable at exactly the same time another thread is reading from a variable, which causes your program to crash. This is because accessing and mutating variables are actually not atomic operations in most cases. You'll need to look into Mutual Exclusion. To use mutexes on the CBC, you'll need to #include <pthread.h>, which is the threading system the CBC uses. Here is an page containing several examples: http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialPosixThreads.html.

Basically:

pthread_mutex_t mutex = PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER;
unsigned int i = 0;
 
void my_process() {
   while(1) {
      pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex);
      i++;
      pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);
   }
}
 
int main() {
    while(1) {
       pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex);
       printf("%u\n", i);
       pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);
    }
}

Assuming you started the my_process thread at some point, this would be safe code. Now, this would probably never crash the program, because you aren't doing anything important with the value. When you start using real variables to do real things, however, crashes can start occurring.

I find it very strange we don't offer some sort of pthread_mutex wrapper. I'll add it to my todo list.

Let me know if you need any more help.

Okay! Thanks Braden!

I just utilized the pthread library and it's working fine, especially because it allows you to pass pointers of whatever you please.

VERY HAPPY to have threading working finally!

A function like this could be helpful if included in your wrapper

int start_nvprocess(void (*function_name)(), void *data_ptr)
{
      pthread_t this_thread;
      return(pthread_create(&this_thread, NULL, function_name, (void *) data_ptr));
}