Re: [boost] [gsoc-2013] Boost.Thread/ThreadPool project

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc-2013] Boost.Thread/ThreadPool project
From: Vicente J. Botet Escriba (vicente.botet_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-04-25 13:46:18

Le 25/04/13 17:42, Dan Lincan a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> You can find my proposal for the thread_pool Project at [1]. Please
> tell me how I can improve it and where to give more details, further
> explanations. I have avoided giving implementation details and focused
> on sketching the interface.
>
> [1] http://danlincan.3owl.com/gsoc/Proposal.pdf
>
I have some questions:

* Why the submit function of all the thread pools doesn't returns the same?
* What is the advantage of  returning future from submit call?
* Would the destructor of the future resulting of the submit call wait 
until the task has been finished?
* What about having a specific time based pool that will submit the 
function to another pool once the duration/time_point has 
elapsed/reached? Or specific free functions submit_after/submit_at that 
use a hidden thread/queue to manage with the time constraint?
* I would provide a submit function that has as parameter the function 
to call and its parameters, as std::async, std::thread::thread, or 
std::packaged_task provide, so that the user is not forced  to use bind.
* I would move the time argument as the fist one of the time based 
functions so that the preceding point can be made possible for these 
functions also.
* For a work-stealing thread pool the user would need a function to 
force the scheduling of new jobs when it needs to wait for some jobs to 
finish.
* I don't see nothing about cancellation of submitted functions. Could 
you comment on this?
* From the interface all the pools are non-blocking, that is the queue 
are not bounded. Have you some thought about thread pool that have 
bounded queues and that could block or tell the user that the queues are 
congested, ...
* Quite frequent we need to submit jobs that need to be handled in a 
sequential order, what do you propose for this use case?
* In addition to submitting a job after/at a given duration/time_point 
have been elapsed/reached, we often need to submit a job that needs the 
result of another job. How a user would be able to do it. Would the 
library help her/him?
* It would be great to reference existing libraries/proposals and how 
your proposal solves limitations you can find in the referenced libraries.
* How these thread pool can be used with un updated async function that 
use thread pools?

Best,
Vicente