[vbox-dev] Multiple-thread apartment (MTA) conflicts with OLE drag/drop?

[Knut St. Osmundsen]

On May 15, 2009, at 19:32, Huihong Luo wrote:

> Seems this is a known issue on windows host, any ideas to fix it?
>
> Currently, VirtualBox.exe requires MTA to operate correctly, but OLE  
> Drag/Drop requires Single-thread apartment (STA) threading model.
>
> I tried a few things for a few days, but not working. With STA,  
> virtualbox.exe accepts ole drops, but it will crashes at some point.  
> With MTA, drag/drop does not work.
>
> This is a major obstacle to implement dnd.

We have been aware of this ever since we switched to Qt4 since it uses  
the OLE Clipboard API. The problem was reported to Trolltech but they  
didn't have any constructive feedback for us. We've since created a  
workaround for the OLE API where the problematic API calls are routed  
to a thread running in an STA. I'm not entirely sure if this  
workaround can be extended to the OLE Drag/Drop API, but I sure hope  
so. :-) I'll try find out whether we're allowed to publish the  
workaround or not.

Kind Regards,
  knut