async-condvar-fair

Condition variables for async Rust. Features:

• Fair. notify_one always wakes up the longest-waiting waiter.

• Novel Baton facility to help avoid dropped notifications which can otherwise arise through async task cancellation.

• Works with any async runtime.

• Can work with any kind of mutex (sync or async).

• 100% safe code. (Uses parking_lot and dlv-list internally.)

• Can handle multiple different mutexes interacting with multiple different condvars, if you like that kind of thing.

Main entrypoint

The main entrypoint to this library is Condvar. See its documentation for details of the constructors and methods available.

Example

// async-condvar-fair = { version = "0.2", features = "parking_lot_0_12" }
// parking_lot = { version = "0.12", features = ["send_guard"] }
# #[cfg(feature = "parking_lot_0_12")] mod demo {
use std::collections::VecDeque;
use async_condvar_fair::{Condvar, BatonExt};
use parking_lot::Mutex;

struct Shared {
    cv: Condvar,
    queue: Mutex<VecDeque<String>>,
}

impl Shared {
    pub async fn procssor(&self) {
        let mut guard = self.queue.lock();
        let mut baton = None;
        loop {
            while let Some(entry) = guard.pop_front() {
                println!("processing {:?}", &entry);
            }
            baton.dispose();

            let got = self.cv.wait_baton(guard).await;
            guard = got.0;
            baton = got.1;
        }
    }
}
# }

Mutexes - choosing a mutex, sync vs async

Note that it can make perfect sense to have an async condvar, but protect the shared state with a sync mutex. If the operations which occur while holding the mutex are fast (and, in particular, do not perform IO), this is usually the best choice.

parking_lot::Mutex is a good choice for such a sync mutex, and is conveniently supported by async-condvar-fair. You will probably want to enable parking_lot's send_guard feature.

If you use a sync mutex, you probably don't intend to be awaiting with the mutex held, so you can probably use plain wait (rather than wait_baton).

If the operations you do while holding the mutex are slow, you should use the async mutex supplied with your async runtime. In this case, if you are using notify_one you should consider using wait_baton to avoid task cancellation causing lost notifications: see Baton.

Mutex guard, Sending between threads

In a multithreaded async runtime, tasks can move between threads. This means the mutex guard needs to be Send. Async mutex guards supplied with multithreaded async runtimes are all Send. Sync mutex guards often aren't.

For example, std::sync::MutexGuard, which can only be used with Condvar with a non-multithreaded runtime, because futures which have a local variable with such a guard will not be Send. Use parking_lot with send_guard enabled, instead.

Mutexes - how to pass the mutex to wait_baton et al

Condvar::wait_baton and wait can in principle work with any mutex. But they need to know how to relock the mutex.

For the most convenient mutexes, like parking_lot::Mutex, you can just pass the guard to wait. Condvar will use the guard to unlock the mutex, and then to relock it again during wakeup.

But for many mutexes, this is not possible, because the guard type does not provide a way to get back to the unlocked mutex reference. This is the case, for example, for std::sync::Mutex.

For these inconvenient mutexes, you can pass a tuple to wait_baton or wait, or use wait_no_relock and relock the mutex yourself.

Builtin mutex support, and async-condvar-fair crate features

Notes: 0. None of these are not enabled by default, since each one implies a dependency on the corresponding crate.

1. Enable the parking_lot_N feature corresponding to the parking_lot version you are using (as specified in your Cargo.toml). Enable parking_lot's send_guard feature for use with a multithreaded runtime.
2. Single-threaded runtimes only.

Use with other mutexes

The support listed above is all achieved through provided implementations of the RelockMutexGuard trait.

If you want to use a mutex type without builtin support in async-condvar-wait, use the RelockMutexGuard! macro to define a suitable impl, define that impl by hand, or use wait_no_relock and relock the mutex yourself each time.

Example of passing a tuple of guard and mutex

# fn main() {
# #[cfg(feature = "parking_lot_0_12")] {
# use std::collections::VecDeque;
# use async_condvar_fair::{Condvar, BatonExt};
use std::sync::Mutex;
struct Shared {
    cv: Condvar,
    queue: Mutex<VecDeque<String>>,
}
# 
# impl Shared {
#    pub async fn procssor(&self) {
#        let mut guard = self.queue.lock().unwrap();
#        let mut baton = None;
loop {
    while let Some(entry) = guard.pop_front() {
        println!("processing {:?}", &entry);
        if entry.is_empty() { break }
    }
    baton.dispose();

    let got = self.cv.wait_baton((guard, &self.queue)).await;
    guard = got.0;
    baton = got.1;
}
#    }
# } } }

Change log - breaking changes and significant bug fixes

• 1.0.1 2024-02-20:

  • No API or functional changes.
  • Relax dlv-list dependencies (both upwards and downwards).
  • Explicitly declare our MSRV (1.56).
  • Minor fixes to docs.
  • Testing improvements.
  • Rename Cargo.lock.example to Cargo.lock.

• 1.0.0 2022-10-11:

  • Update our own version to 1.x.
  • Bump dlv-list dependency. No API or functional changes.

• 0.2.2 2022-03-27:

  • Bump dlv-list dependency. No API or functional changes.

• 0.2.1 2022-03-27:

  • Breaking change: New parking_lot_N features for providing RelockMutexGuard impls for specific parking_lot versions. When upgrading from 0.1.0, specify the new feature parking_lot_0_11.
  • Support for parking_lot 0.9, 0.10, 0.12.

• 0.2.0: version number not used.

• 0.1.0, 2021-07-05

  • Initial release.

Copyright, licence, and NO WARRANTY

Copyright Ian Jackson and contributors to the Rust package async-condvar-fair. There is NO WARRANTY. See the files GPL-3 and LICENCE in the source tree.

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later