Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Improve CoroutineDispatcher documentation #3359

Merged
merged 8 commits into from Jul 12, 2022
33 changes: 26 additions & 7 deletions kotlinx-coroutines-core/common/src/CoroutineDispatcher.kt
Expand Up @@ -45,6 +45,9 @@ public abstract class CoroutineDispatcher :
* potentially forming an event-loop to prevent stack overflows.
* The event loop is an advanced topic and its implications can be found in [Dispatchers.Unconfined] documentation.
*
* The [context] parameter represents the context of the coroutine that is being dispatched,
* or [EmptyCoroutineContext] if a non-coroutine-specific [Runnable] is dispatched instead.
*
* A dispatcher can override this method to provide a performance optimization and avoid paying a cost of an unnecessary dispatch.
* E.g. [MainCoroutineDispatcher.immediate] checks whether we are already in the required UI thread in this method and avoids
* an additional dispatch when it is not required.
Expand All @@ -58,6 +61,9 @@ public abstract class CoroutineDispatcher :
*
* This method should generally be exception-safe. An exception thrown from this method
* may leave the coroutines that use this dispatcher in the inconsistent and hard to debug state.
*
* @see dispatch
* @see Dispatchers.Unconfined
*/
public open fun isDispatchNeeded(context: CoroutineContext): Boolean = true

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -102,18 +108,31 @@ public abstract class CoroutineDispatcher :
}

/**
* Dispatches execution of a runnable [block] onto another thread in the given [context].
* Requests execution of a runnable [block].
* The dispatcher guarantees that [block] will eventually execute, typically by dispatching it to a thread pool,
* using a dedicated thread, or just executing the block in place.
* The [context] parameter represents the context of the coroutine that is being dispatched,
* or [EmptyCoroutineContext] if a non-coroutine-specific [Runnable] is dispatched instead.
* Implementations may use [context] for additional context-specific information,
* such as priority, whether the dispatched coroutine can be invoked in place,
* coroutine name, and additional diagnostic elements.
*
* This method should guarantee that the given [block] will be eventually invoked,
* otherwise the system may reach a deadlock state and never leave it.
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

It's even more sinister than that: if we drop dispatched coroutines, finally may never be executed, creating a nasty resource leak.

* Cancellation mechanism is transparent for [CoroutineDispatcher] and is managed by [block] internals.
* The cancellation mechanism is transparent for [CoroutineDispatcher] and is managed by [block] internals.
*
* This method should generally be exception-safe. An exception thrown from this method
* may leave the coroutines that use this dispatcher in the inconsistent and hard to debug state.
* may leave the coroutines that use this dispatcher in an inconsistent and hard-to-debug state.
*
* This method must not immediately call [block]. Doing so may result in `StackOverflowError`
* when `dispatch` is invoked repeatedly, for example when [yield] is called in a loop.
* In order to execute a block in place, it is required to return `false` from [isDispatchNeeded]
* and delegate the `dispatch` implementation to `Dispatchers.Unconfined.dispatch` in such cases.
* To support this, the coroutines machinery ensures in-place execution and forms an event-loop to
* avoid unbound recursion.
*
* This method must not immediately call [block]. Doing so would result in [StackOverflowError]
* when [yield] is repeatedly called from a loop. However, an implementation that returns `false` from
* [isDispatchNeeded] can delegate this function to `dispatch` method of [Dispatchers.Unconfined], which is
* integrated with [yield] to avoid this problem.
* @see isDispatchNeeded
* @see Dispatchers.Unconfined
*/
public abstract fun dispatch(context: CoroutineContext, block: Runnable)

Expand Down