Worker Pool for similar tasks

[butzemannbiber]

I would like to use a worker pool to delegate tasks to multiple workers with the same interface.

Without Comlink: When there is a new task to be done, the pool selects a worker that is currently idle and assigns the task to it. For the time a worker is processing a task i mark the worker as "busy" - if the work is done i mark the worker as idle. Its working fine but i need to write my own message protocol ending up writing long switch-case statements

With Comlink: The idea is to request a "free" worker from the worker pool (using a Promise), execute an async function, and process the result in the form of a return value. I can mark the requested worker as "busy" but i have problems mark is as "idle" after returning the value.
Unfortunately, I have not found a way to determine whether or how many "messages" are currently being processed by a worker. So, whether a function is currently being executed via Comlink.

Do you have any idea on how I could solve the problem?

[butzemannbiber]

Just in case somebody else is interested - i ended up using the following concept:

WP - Worker-Pool (n comlink worker instances)

1. Request side: Query WP for a - not busy - worker instance and get a promise for the worker
2. WP: marks a - not busy - worker as busy and resolve the promise
3. Request side: do what ever you want with the worker
4. Request side: if your work is done call a release method at the WP to remove the "busy" flag from the worker

This is a somewhat cumbersome way but aslong as the worker ist getting released back to the pool at the end - its working.

If there is a need for heavy parallel processing and you have a bunch of tasks you can easily use a n-sized worker pool and make sure every available thread is doing as much work as possible (instead of using a distribution algo like round robin)