NAME¶

SDL_LockAudioStream - Lock an audio stream for serialized access.

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <SDL3/SDL_audio.h>

bool SDL_LockAudioStream(SDL_AudioStream *stream);

DESCRIPTION¶

Each SDL_AudioStream has an internal mutex it uses to protect its data structures from threading conflicts. This function allows an app to lock that mutex, which could be useful if registering callbacks on this stream.

One does not need to lock a stream to use in it most cases, as the stream manages this lock internally. However, this lock is held during callbacks, which may run from arbitrary threads at any time, so if an app needs to protect shared data during those callbacks, locking the stream guarantees that the callback is not running while the lock is held.

As this is just a wrapper over SDL_LockMutex for an internal lock; it has all the same attributes (recursive locks are allowed, etc).

Note that when the stream's callback runs, SDL is holding both an internal mutex for the audio device and the stream's lock, in that order. Which is to say: while this function can protect arbitrary data, calling into some SDL audio functions while holding this lock may cause a deadlock--the app holds this lock, and then calls into something that wants to obtain the device lock, in the opposite order that SDL's audio thread obtained them. Therefore, best practice is to use this function to protect simple app data against the audio callback, and be careful about what SDL functions one calls while locked outside of the callback.

FUNCTION PARAMETERS¶

stream

the audio stream to lock.

RETURN VALUE¶

Returns true on success or false on failure; call SDL_GetError() for more information.

THREAD SAFETY¶

It is safe to call this function from any thread.

AVAILABILITY¶

This function is available since SDL 3.2.0.

SEE ALSO¶

SDL_UnlockAudioStream(3)