Quenty / Quenty/NevermoreEngine

Maid::GivePromise() may leak resources

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bug
Dominant language
Lua
Stars
610
Forks
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Avg merge
1d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

In the docs, Maid::GivePromise says it 'Gives a promise to the maid for clean'. Although it returns a promise (rather than a taskid), I assumed this method would behave identically to Maid::GiveTask; you give a resource to a maid, and that maid takes ownership by handling its destruction.

-- Identical?
local promise = Promise.new()
maid:GiveTask(promise)
promise:Then(function() end)

-- Identical?
maid:GivePromise(Promise.new()):Then(function() end)

Instead, I realised that Maid::GivePromise actually wraps the given promise in a new promise, returns that wrapped promise, and will cancel the wrapped promise on cleanup. This means that destroying the maid will cancel the wrapped promise, breaking the chain - but the original promise may still be left pending.

This is a problem because the still-living original promise could may be keeping resources around beyond their usefulness.

local function promiseTimeout()
	local promise = Promise.new()

	local maid = Maid.new()
	promise:Finally(function()
		maid:Destroy()
	end)

	maid:GiveTask(cancellableDelay(1, function()
		print("Promise alive - trying to resolve.")
		promise:Resolve()
	end))

	return promise
end

local maid = Maid.new()

-- This example prints 'Promise alive - trying to resolve.' in the console.
-- Because we assumed the given promise is owned (and destroyed) by the maid, we just leaked a cancellableDelay.
-- What if this delay was longer? Could we accumulate unused delays?
maid:GivePromise(promiseTimeout()):Then(function()
	print("Timeout!")
end)
maid:Destroy()

As a counter-example, if we used Maid::GiveTask in the format originally described...

-- ...
-- Nothing ever prints to the console.
-- This is safe. Nothing leaked.
-- :GiveTask() takes ownership of the resource.
local promise = promiseTimeout()
maid:GiveTask(promise)
promise:Then(function()
	print("Timeout!")
end)
maid:Destroy()
-- ...

The typical use case of a promise is wrapping something intangible, i.e. HttpService::RequestAsync, promiseBoundClass, a BindableEvent. It's easy to miss that these resources have been leaked.

Here's a real-world example where failing to clean up the given promise is bad.

-- If we give this promise to a maid via `::GivePromise`, this part remains until a player touches it.
-- Even though nobody is listening!
local function promiseCharacterTouchTrigger()
	local promise = Promise.new()

	local maid = Maid.new()
	promise:Finally(function()
		maid:Destroy()
	end)

	local part = Instance.new("Part")
	part.Anchored = true
	part.Archivable = false
	part.CanCollide = false
	part.Transparency = 0.5
	part.CanTouch = true
	part.Size = Vector3.one * 8
	part.Parent = workspace
	maid:GiveTask(part.Touched:Connect(function()
		promise:Resolve()
	end))
	maid:GiveTask(part)

	return promise
end

The maid method is useful when you want cache a promise and pass it to many listeners.

function Class:PromiseDataStore()
	return self._dataStorePromise
end

Consumers taking ownership of that unwrapped promise would be really bad! They'd indirectly mutate the service on cleanup, causing a race condition.

However I think most users create a fresh promise per consumer; both Janitor and Trove take ownership and destroy the original promise, rather than just break the chain like Maid does. The behaviour of Maid::GivePromise can't be changed, but the docs should reflect the subtlety of its usage.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the documentation for Maid::GivePromise and compare its wording with the GiveTask behavior described in the issue. Clarify that GivePromise returns a wrapped promise and cancels the wrapper on maid cleanup without taking ownership of the original promise; done when the examples and ownership caveat accurately match the described behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
lua
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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