typelevel / typelevel/cats-effect

Contention on Map when using IO.unsafeToFuture()

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Scala
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Description

From https://discord.com/channels/632277896739946517/632278585700384799/921743315169325087

In a project based on Future, we introduce IO step by step. We use IO.unsafeToFuture() for interoperability.
I can observe the following locking:

Screenshot 2021-12-18 at 13 35 46

The whole application is running with one main ExecutionContext using a ForkJoinPool building very similarly to scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.opportunistic.

We build our own IORuntime to re-use the main ExecutionContext like this:

import cats.effect.unsafe.{IORuntimeConfig, Scheduler}

import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor
import scala.concurrent.{blocking, ExecutionContext}

object IORuntimeFactory {

  /**
   * To be able to run some [[cats.effect.IO]], for example into a [[scala.concurrent.Future]],
   * we need a [[cats.effect.unsafe.IORuntime]]. This one is build from existing execution context.
   * It does not follow the best practices from cats effects as we are using the same
   * execution context for blocking and non blocking operations.
   *
   * This should be ok as long as we don't use it a lot.
   *
   * In general, it's better to avoid using it, and to consider using a [[cats.effect.std.Dispatcher]] instead.
   */
  def from(ec: ExecutionContext): cats.effect.unsafe.IORuntime = {
    val compute = ec
    val blockingEC = new ExecutionContext {
      override def execute(runnable: Runnable): Unit = ec.execute(() => blocking(runnable.run()))
      override def reportFailure(cause: Throwable): Unit = ec.reportFailure(cause)
    }
    cats.effect.unsafe.IORuntime(compute, blockingEC, scheduler, () => (), IORuntimeConfig())
  }

  /** same scheduler as in [[cats.effect.unsafe.IORuntime.global]] */
  val scheduler: Scheduler = {
    val threadPrefix: String = "io-scheduler"
    val scheduler = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(
      1,
      { r =>
        val t = new Thread(r)
        t.setName(threadPrefix)
        t.setDaemon(true)
        t.setPriority(Thread.MAX_PRIORITY)
        t
      })
    scheduler.setRemoveOnCancelPolicy(true)
    Scheduler.fromScheduledExecutor(scheduler)
  }

}

This runtime can be instantiated many times.
For the observed contention, it is instantiated once and re-used.

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 by examining the reported IO.unsafeToFuture() interaction with the custom IORuntimeFactory and its shared ForkJoinPool-based ExecutionContext. Compare the compute and blocking execution contexts and the single-threaded scheduler against the locking shown in the report; done means identifying and resolving the observed contention, with an appropriate regression test if the relevant runtime code is located.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
scala
Domain
backend, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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