background

Issue any function call in a background thread.

Caveats

you must compile with --gc:arc or --gc:orc
you must compile with --threads:on
due to Nim bugs, your function declaration must specify types for all parameters.

Usage

Prefix your function call with background to immediately run it in a background thread. The return value may be invoked to retrieve any result of the call.

import background

proc greet(): int =
  echo "hello"
  result = 42

var greeting = background greet()  # run greet() in background
assert greeting() == 42            # recover any return value
echo greeting()                    # it's still 42, buddy

Here's a slightly more interesting example from the tests in which we make three expensive calls in the background and recover their results.

# we'll use this to track when threads terminate
var q {.global.}: int

# our "expensive" call
proc fib(n: int; o: int = 0): int =
  result =
    case n
    of 0, 1:
      1
    else:
      fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)

  # tracking termination order
  if o > 0:
    q.inc o

let
  x = 44   # 3rd most expensive
  y = 46   #     most expensive
  z = 45   # 2nd most expensive

var a = background fib(x)
checkpoint "a: created background invocation"

var b = background fib(y, o = 3)
checkpoint "b: created background invocation"

var c = background fib(z, 2)
checkpoint "c: created background invocation"

checkpoint "waiting for results..."

checkpoint "a: return value ", a()
check a() == 1134903170
check q == 0
checkpoint "b: return value ", b()
check b() == 2971215073
check q == 5
checkpoint "c: return value ", c()
check c() == 1836311903
check q == 5

The output from the tests looks like this:

Installation

$ nimph clone disruptek/background

or if you're still using Nimble like it's 2012,

$ nimble install https://github.com/disruptek/background

Documentation

The documentation employs Nim's runnableExamples feature to ensure that usage examples are guaranteed to be accurate. The documentation is rebuilt during the CI process and hosted on GitHub.

License

MIT