Crash with SurfaceView in Android NDK when pausing/resuming app fast

Question

When I pause/unpause my app really fast then I get the following problem:

E/BufferQueueProducer(  177): [SurfaceView] connect(P): already connected (cur=1 req=1)
E/libEGL  (25863): eglCreateWindowSurface: native_window_api_connect (win=0xb4984508) failed (0xffffffea) (already connected to another API?)
E/libEGL  (25863): eglCreateWindowSurface:416 error 3003 (EGL_BAD_ALLOC)

Im pretty sure that I am stopping/starting my render thread correctly and this issue really only occurs when I pause/resume the app really fast (like when you mash the open-apps button).

Any ideas what might be the cause for eglCreateWindowSurface returning EGL_NO_SURFACE here? My guess would be it has to do with something still being connected to the SurfaceView.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're trying to create an EGLSurface for a Surface that already has one. If speed is an issue it's usually because of the lag in Surface callback handling -- the SurfaceView Surface is partially handled by the Window Manager, which requires inter-process communication.

Perhaps your native code still has a handle to the old SurfaceHolder, and if you moved more slowly the handle would be replaced by an upcoming surfaceCreated()? It's hard to say without knowing exactly what your code does. One way to approach these sorts of problems is by adding logging at all the interesting state change points, and comparing the logs from "slow" pause/resume and "fast" pause/resume.

It should be possible to avoid these situations by managing the SurfaceView state carefully. This appendix to the graphics arch doc talks about the difference between the Activity and SurfaceView lifecycles, and two ways to structure an app to avoid issues.