typelevel / typelevel/cats-effect

Queued but unstarted work on `Dispatcher.sequential` should be cancelable

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#4,069 6 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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:beetle: bug
Dominant language
Scala
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Description

A queued task to a dispatcher cannot be canceled:

import cats.effect.std.Dispatcher
import cats.effect.unsafe.implicits.global
import cats.effect.IO
import scala.concurrent.Await
import scala.concurrent.duration.Duration

val (dispatcher, shutDownDispatcher) = Dispatcher.sequential[IO].allocated.unsafeRunSync()

dispatcher.unsafeToFuture(IO.never)
val cancel = dispatcher.unsafeRunCancelable(IO.unit)
Await.result(cancel(), Duration.Inf) // hangs

Perhaps this is explained somewhere, but it was surprising to me.

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 running the Scala reproduction in the issue and inspect the Dispatcher.sequential, unsafeToFuture, and unsafeRunCancelable entry points. Trace how queued work is handled and compare the behavior of the returned cancel function. Done means the queued task can be canceled without the call hanging, with coverage for this reproduction.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

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

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