Serious bug identified in SmartDashboard/NetworkTables -- robot hangs

[JamesTerm]

Originally Posted by virtuald

A bug report has been filed on the WPILib tracker here: http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/go/artf1719

Thanks VirtualD for this find... I wish I could have worked with you in beta this season, as I have as well made improvements to the Network Tables... I originally wanted to make the win32 port, but then as I got it working I needed the shutdown to work properly and discovered lockups during disconnect and reconnect stresses. So I then focused on one issue... and that was how the parent classes deletes the child class... instead of the child class trying to delete itself within its own thread. I also worked with the author to provide a shutdown procedure and ensure there were no memory leaks. We worked together on this over the summer... I've attached https://www.dropbox.com/s/iv3rozae2q...tDashboard.ppt and https://www.dropbox.com/s/9p6jhhnt8y...ard_Client.ppt an object oriented diagram that helps me navigate through the code.

I wish I'd have ran into Greg in San Antonio (that is where I live btw)... as our Robot has also fallen victim to this symptom in 3 matches. One of the FTA guys has captured our log but I haven't heard back from him.

I did not get into the details of guts of the code, but now I'd like to review your changes, and see what can be done to get some official fix for all teams. Thanks so much again... I can't begin to tell you how frustrating this has been... when the team looks at me and ask why our robot is failing... but hey that's ok... we can work this out... I really needed some good testers to test the changes made over the summer... so I'm hoping to hook up with everyone who's had a hand in the Network Tables code, and try to get this fixed properly and be reliable!