C# Screen-Share Project

Question

I've recently been working on a screen-sharing/remote desktop project in C# .NET Framework 4.5. How it works is when the start button is pressed, the client will send a command to the server to begin sending screenshots until the screen-sharing bool is false (i.e the 'Stop' button is pressed).

All data is prefixed with a byte identifying what command it is, and the following 4 bytes are used to measure the length of the packet.

My question is, should I be using a Thread or a Task for this job? I need one or the other, otherwise the client's UI freezes.

Below I am using a Thread:

private void ProcessCommand(byte command)
{
    if (command == Commands.StartRemoteDesktop && !Globals.screensharing)
        {
            new Thread(StartSharing).Start();
        }
}

private void StartSharing()
    {
        Globals.screensharing = true;
        while (Globals.screensharing)
        {
            Methods.SendCapture();
        }
    }

And over here is how it looks with a Task:

private void ProcessCommand(byte command)
{
    if (command == Commands.StartRemoteDesktop && !Globals.screensharing)
    {
        Task.Run(() =>
        {
            while (Globals.screensharing)
            {
                Methods.SendCapture();
            }
        });
    }
}

I'm unsure what would be the better option here.

Answer 1

It depends on what you mean by "better". I'd use a Thread since the job is constantly running.

A Thread object will be a foreground thread, which will prevent the application from terminating as long as it is running.

Task.Run will queue the job up to run on a thread pool thread. It may not start running immediately, and it will be a background thread, so it will not prevent the application from terminating if all other foreground threads have terminated.

The number of threads that a thread pool can run is limited, so if your job is always using one of them that increases the possibility that some other task will run late. Or possibly your job will be delayed while some other task that is part of the thread pool runs.