Motivation:
To know when we next need to wake up, we keep track of what the next
deadline will be. This works great, but in order to keep track of this
UInt64 we save off an entire ScheduledTask. This object is quite wide (6
pointers wide), and two of those pointers require ARC traffic, so doing
this saving produces unnecessary overhead.
Worse, saving this task plays poorly with task cancellation. If the
saved task is cancelled, this has the effect of "retaining" that task
until the next event loop tick. This is unlikely to produce catastrophic
bugs in real programs, where the loop does tick, but it violates our
tests which rigorously assume that we will always drop a task when it is
cancelled. In specific manufactured cases it's possible to produce leaks
of non-trivial duration.
Modifications:
- Wrote a weirdly complex test.
- Moved the implementation of Task.readyIn to a method on NIODeadline
- Saved a NIODeadline instead of a ScheduledTask
Result:
Minor performance improvement in the core event loop processing, minor
correctness improvement.
### Motivation:
When scheduling tasks with the same deadline the current order of execution is undefined. Fixes https://github.com/apple/swift-nio/issues/1541
### Modifications:
In my previous PR https://github.com/apple/swift-nio/pull/2010, I added an internal id to every `ScheduledTask` to give them an identity for cancellation purposes. In this PR, I am now using the same id to also ensure that the execution of tasks with the same deadline is the same as the order they were scheduled in.
### Result:
`ScheduledTask`s are now executed in their scheduled order when they have the same deadline.
### Motivation:
In my previous PR https://github.com/apple/swift-nio/pull/2009, I added baseline performance and allocation tests around `scheduleTask` and `execute`. After analysing, the various allocations that happen when scheduling a task there were only a few that could be optimized away potentially.
### Modifications:
This PR converts the `ScheduledTask` class to a struct which will reduce the number of allocations for scheduling tasks by 1. The only thing that needs to be worked around when converting to a struct is giving it an identity so that we can implement `Equatable` conformance properly. I explored two options. First, using an `ObjectIdentifier` passed to the init. Second, using an atomic counter per EventLoop. I went with the latter since the former requires an additional allocation in the case of calling `execute`
### Result:
`scheduleTask` and `execute` require one less allocation
Motivation:
A lot of libraries that use SwiftNIO don't allow/require the user to
specify what `EventLoop`s a certain function runs on. Something like
```
myHTTPClient.get("https://example.com) -> EventLoopFuture<...>
```
Internally `MyHTTPClient` has not much choice but using the
`EventLoopGroup.next()` method to obtain an `EventLoop` on which to
create the `EventLoopFuture` (that is returned).
This all works fine but unfortunately it usually forces a thread switch
which is most of the time avoidable if we're already running on an
`EventLoop`.
Modifications:
Provide an `EventLoopGroup.any()` method which can be used like so:
```swift
func get(_ url: String) -> EventLoopFuture<Response> {
let promise = self.group.any().makePromise(of: Response.self)
[...]
return promise.futureResult
}
```
`EventLoopGroup.any()` very much works like `EventLoopGroup.next()`
except that it tries -- if possible -- to return the _current_
`EventLoop`.
Note that this means that `any()` is _not_ the right solution if you
want to load balance. Likely, everything will now stay on the same
`EventLoop`.
Result:
Fewer thread switches.
Motivation:
The remaining NIO code really conceptually belongs in a module called
NIOPosix, and NIOCore should really be called NIO. We can't really do
that last step, but we can prepare by pushing the bulk of the remaining
code into a module called NIOPosix.
Modifications:
- Move NIO to NIOPosix
- Make NIO an umbrella module.
Result:
NIOPosix exists.
Cory Benfield