[Python-Dev] A more flexible task creation

[Nathaniel Smith]

How about:

async def wait_to_run(async_fn, *args):
    await wait_for_something()
    return await async_fn(*args)

task = loop.create_task(wait_to_run(myfunc, ...))

-----

Whatever strategy you use, you should also think about what semantics you
want if one of these delayed tasks is cancelled before it starts.

For regular, non-delayed tasks, Trio makes sure that even if it gets
cancelled before it starts, then it still gets scheduled and runs until the
first cancellation point. This is necessary for correct resource hand-off
between tasks:

async def some_task(handle):
    with handle:
        await ...

If we skipped running this task entirely, then the handle wouldn't be
closed properly; scheduling it once allows the with block to run, and then
get cleaned up by the cancellation exception. I'm not sure but I think
asyncio handles pre-cancellation in a similar way. (Yury, do you know?)

Now, in delayed task case, there's a similar issue. If you want to keep the
same solution, then you might want to instead write:

# asyncio
async def wait_to_run(async_fn, *args):
    try:
        await wait_for_something()
    except asyncio.CancelledError:
        # have to create a subtask to make it cancellable
        subtask = loop.create_task(async_fn(*args))
        # then cancel it immediately
        subtask.cancel()
        # and wait for the cancellation to be processed
        return await subtask
    else:
        return await async_fn(*args)

In trio, this could be simplified to

# trio
async def wait_to_run(async_fn, *args):
    try:
        await wait_for_something()
    except trio.Cancelled:
        pass
    return await async_fn(*args)

(This works because of trio's "stateful cancellation" – if the whole thing
is cancelled, then as soon as async_fn hits a cancellation point the
exception will be re-delivered.)

-n

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 13:47 Michel Desmoulin <desmoulinmichel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I was working on a concurrency limiting code for asyncio, so the user
> may submit as many tasks as one wants, but only a max number of tasks
> will be submitted to the event loop at the same time.
>
> However, I wanted that passing an awaitable would always return a task,
> no matter if the task was currently scheduled or not. The goal is that
> you could add done callbacks to it, decide to force schedule it, etc
>
> I dug in the asyncio.Task code, and encountered:
>
>     def __init__(self, coro, *, loop=None):
>         ...
>         self._loop.call_soon(self._step)
>         self.__class__._all_tasks.add(self)
>
> I was surprised to see that instantiating a Task class has any side
> effect at all, let alone 2, and one of them being to be immediately
> scheduled for execution.
>
> I couldn't find a clean way to do what I wanted: either you
> loop.create_task() and you get a task but it runs, or you don't run
> anything, but you don't get a nice task object to hold on to.
>
> I tried several alternatives, like returning a future, and binding the
> future awaiting to the submission of a task, but that was complicated
> code that duplicated a lot of things.
>
> I tried creating a custom task, but it was even harder, setting a custom
> event policy, to provide a custom event loop with my own create_task()
> accepting parameters. That's a lot to do just to provide a parameter to
> Task, especially if you already use a custom event loop (e.g: uvloop). I
> was expecting to have to create a task factory only, but task factories
> can't get any additional parameters from create_task()).
>
> Additionally I can't use ensure_future(), as it doesn't allow to pass
> any parameter to the underlying Task, so if I want to accept any
> awaitable in my signature, I need to provide my own custom ensure_future().
>
> All those implementations access a lot of _private_api, and do other
> shady things that linters hate; plus they are fragile at best. What's
> more, Task being rewritten in C prevents things like setting self._coro,
> so we can only inherit from the pure Python slow version.
>
> In the end, I can't even await the lazy task, because it blocks the
> entire program.
>
> Hence I have 2 distinct, but independent albeit related, proposals:
>
> - Allow Task to be created but not scheduled for execution, and add a
> parameter to ensure_future() and create_task() to control this. Awaiting
> such a task would just do like asyncio.sleep(O) until it is scheduled
> for execution.
>
> - Add an parameter to ensure_future() and create_task() named "kwargs"
> that accept a mapping and will be passed as **kwargs to the underlying
> created Task.
>
> I insist on the fact that the 2 proposals are independent, so please
> don't reject both if you don't like one or the other. Passing a
> parameter to the underlying custom Task is still of value even without
> the unscheduled instantiation, and vice versa.
>
> Also, if somebody has any idea on how to make a LazyTask that we can
> await on without blocking everything, I'll take it.
>
>
>
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