Lwt_preemptive
This module allows to mix preemptive threads with Lwt
cooperative threads. It maintains an extensible pool of preemptive threads to which you can detach computations.
See Mwt for a more modern implementation.
val detach : ('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b Lwt.t
detach f x
runs the computation f x
in a separate preemptive thread. detach
evaluates to an Lwt promise, which is pending until the preemptive thread completes.
detach
calls simple_init
internally, which means that the number of preemptive threads is capped by default at four. If you would like a higher limit, call init
or set_bounds
directly.
Note that Lwt thread-local storage (i.e., Lwt.with_value
) cannot be safely used from within f
. The same goes for most of the rest of Lwt. If you need to run an Lwt thread in f
, use run_in_main
.
val run_in_main : (unit -> 'a Lwt.t) -> 'a
run_in_main f
can be called from a detached computation to execute f ()
in the main preemptive thread, i.e. the one executing Lwt_main.run
. run_in_main f
blocks until f ()
completes, then returns its result. If f ()
raises an exception, run_in_main f
raises the same exception.
Lwt.with_value
may be used inside f ()
. Lwt.get
can correctly retrieve values set this way inside f ()
, but not values set using Lwt.with_value
outside f ()
.
init min max log
initialises this module. i.e. it launches the minimum number of preemptive threads and starts the dispatcher.
simple_init ()
checks if the library is not yet initialized, and if not, does a simple initialization. The minimum number of threads is set to zero, maximum to four, and the log function is left unchanged, i.e. the default built-in logging function is used. See Lwt_preemptive.init
.
Note: this function is automatically called by detach
.
get_bounds ()
returns the minimum and the maximum number of preemptive threads.
set_bounds (min, max)
set the minimum and the maximum number of preemptive threads.
Sets the size of the waiting queue, if no more preemptive threads are available. When the queue is full, detach
will sleep until a thread is available.