GDI handle leak using TGIFImage in a second thread

Question

I have a background thread which loads images (either from disk or a server), with the goal of eventually passing them to the main thread to draw. When this second thread is loading GIF images using the VCL's TGIFImage class, this program sometimes leaks several handles each time the following line executes in the thread:

m_poBitmap32->Assign(poGIFImage);

That is, the just-opened GIF image is being assigned to a bitmap owned by the thread. None of these are shared with any other threads, i.e. are entirely localised to the thread. It is timing-dependent, so doesn't occur every time the line is executed, but when it does occur it happens only on that line. Each leak is one DC, one palette, and one bitmap. (I use GDIView, which gives more detailed GDI information than Process Explorer.) m_poBitmap32 here is a Graphics32 TBitmap32 object, but I have reproduced this using plain VCL-only classes, i.e. using Graphics::TBitmap::Assign.

Eventually I get an EOutOfResources exception, probably indicating the desktop heap is full:

:7671b9bc KERNELBASE.RaiseException + 0x58
:40837f2f ; C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vclimg140.bpl
:40837f68 ; C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vclimg140.bpl
:4084459f ; C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vclimg140.bpl
:4084441a vclimg140.@Gifimg@TGIFFrame@Draw$qqrp16Graphics@TCanvasrx11Types@TRectoo + 0x4a
:408495e2 ; C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vclimg140.bpl
:50065465 rtl140.@Classes@TPersistent@Assign$qqrp19Classes@TPersistent + 0x9
:00401C0E TLoadingThread::Execute(this=:00A44970)

How do I solve this and safely use TGIFImage in a background thread?

And secondly, will I encounter this same problem with the PNG, JPEG or BMP classes? I haven't so far, but given it's a threading / timing issue that doesn't mean I won't if they use similar code to TGIFImage.

I am using C++ Builder 2010 (part of RAD Studio.)

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More details

Some research showed I'm not the only person to encounter this. To quote from one thread,

Help (2007) says: In multi-threaded applications that use Lock to protect a canvas, all calls that use the canvas must be protected by a call to Lock. Any thread that does not lock the canvas before using it will introduce potential bugs.

[...]

But this statement is absolute false: you MUST lock the canvas in secondary thread even if other threads don't touch it. Otherwise the canvas's GDI handle can be freed in main thread as unused at any moment (asynchronously).

Another reply indicates something similar, that it may be to do with the GDI object cache in graphics.pas.

That's scary: an object created and used entirely in one thread can have some of its resources freed asynchronously in the main thread. Unfortunately, I don't know how to apply the Lock advice to TGIFImage. TGIFImage has no Canvas, although it does have a Bitmap which has a canvas. Locking that has no effect. I suspect that the problem is actually in TGIFFrame, an internal class. I also do not know if or how I should lock any TBitmap32 resources. I did try assigning a TMemoryBackend to the bitmap, which avoids using GDI, but it had no effect.

Reproduction

You can reproduce this very easily. Create a new VCL app, and make a new unit which contains a thread. In the thread's Execute method, place this code:

while (!Terminated) {
    TGraphic* poGraphic = new TGIFImage();
    TBitmap32* poBMP32 = new TBitmap32();
    __try {
        poGraphic->LoadFromFile(L"test.gif");
        poBMP32->Assign(poGraphic);
    } __finally {
        delete poBMP32;
        delete poGraphic;
    }
}

You can use Graphics::TBitmap if you don't have Graphics32 installed.

In the app's main form, add a button which creates and starts the thread. Add another button which executes similar code to the above (once only, no need to loop. Mine also stores the TBitmap32 as a member variable instead of creating it there, and invalidates so it will eventually paint it to the form.) Run the program and click the button to start the thread. You will probably see GDI objects leak already, but if not press the second button which runs the similar code once in the main thread - once is enough, it seems to trigger something - and it will leak. You will see memory usage rise, and that it leaks GDI handles at the rate of several dozen per second.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the fix is very, very ugly. The basic idea is that the background thread must acquire a lock that the main thread holds when it's between messages.

The naive implementation is like this:

1. Lock canvas mutex.
2. Spawn background thread.
3. Wait for message.
4. Release canvas mutex.
5. Process message.
6. Lock canvas mutex.
7. Go to step 3.

Note that this means the background thread can only access GDI objects while the main thread is busy, not while it's waiting for a message. And this means the background thread cannot own any canvasses while it does not hold the mutex. These two requirements tend to be too painful. So you may need to refine the algorithm.

One refinement is to have the background thread send the main thread a message when it needs to use a canvas. This will cause the main thread to more quickly release the canvas mutex so the background thread can get it.

I think this will be enough to make you give up this idea. Instead, perhaps, read the file from the background thread but process it in the main thread.