SDL_HINT_THR...IORITY_POLICY(3)

💖 SDL_HINT_THREAD_PRIORITY_POLICY 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the SDL3 FUNCTIONS section of the manual, and today's main character is SDL_HINT_THREAD_PRIORITY_POLICY — a string that carries extra info you wanna hand over to SDL_SetCurrentThreadPriority. that's the whole vibe. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

SDL_HINT_THREAD_PRIORITY_POLICY — a string specifying additional information to use with SDL_SetCurrentThreadPriority. literally just a little note you pass along so SDL knows how you want your thread priority situation handled 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <SDL3/SDL_hints.h>

#define SDL_HINT_THREAD_PRIORITY_POLICY "SDL_THREAD_PRIORITY_POLICY"

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea 🍓 by default, SDL_SetCurrentThreadPriority is gonna make all the appropriate system changes on its own to apply a thread priority. like, on systems using pthreads, the scheduler policy gets changed automatically to a policy that works well with whatever priority you asked for. no cap, it just handles it.

but if your code has specific requirements — like, very particular needs — you can override SDL's default behavior with this hint. that's the moment to speak up, bestie 👑

for pthread, the hint values are "current", "other", "fifo" and "rr". currently no other platform hint values are defined — but they may be in the future, so stay tuned i guess 🙈

⚠️ on Linux, the kernel may send SIGKILL to realtime tasks which exceed the distro configured execution budget for rtkit. this budget can be queried through RLIMIT_RTTIME after calling SDL_SetCurrentThreadPriority(). yes that's a real thing and yes it will absolutely end your little thread's whole career 💀

💖 also super important: this hint should be set before calling SDL_SetCurrentThreadPriority(). set it late and it's giving… nothing. order matters, periodt.

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🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

this hint is available since SDL 3.2.0. so if you're on anything older, it's not here yet bestie, sorry 😭

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that's the page!! brought to you by the fine folks at Simple Directmedia Layer, living in SDL 3.4.18, filed under SDL_HINT_THR...IORITY_POLICY(3) in the SDL3 FUNCTIONS girlies. go set your hints before you call the function, mwah 💋✨