Threads

[facekapow]

Does runtime.js support multiple threads? So that I could make some parts not block the system?

[iefserge]

Threads are not supported at the moment, mainly because of the complexity they would introduce. Just curious, what's your usecase?

[facekapow]

So that background jobs could be run (like daemons).

[iefserge]

well, nothing really prevents running background jobs provided they don't block the system

[facekapow]

Well, I need to run synchronous jobs in the daemon (which may take long and block the system).

[iefserge]

The only available option right now is to use setImmediate trick to split long-running tasks into smaller subtasks to prevent blocking.

[facekapow]

How easy (or hard) would it be to implement threading into runtime? I could give it a shot over the weekend.

[iefserge]

Depends on what kind of threading you'd like to implement, what scheduler and preemption mechanism to use, and a way to make it all thread-safe. I'm afraid it's an extremely complex task.

[facekapow]

Ok, well, is there at least a way to launch another V8 instance?

[iefserge]

yes, v8 has the concept of Isolate. In fact, runtimejs internally has some support for that, but it's not enabled. I'm actually trying to get rid of it, because it's very ugly and needs to be completely rewritten.

Just FYI, I think node tried to implement multiple isolates support, but then decided not to do it because of the amount of complexity (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/nodejs/zLzuo292hX0/F7gqfUiKi2sJ).

[facekapow]

Thanks, i'll take a look at it. But, how do you enable it?

[iefserge]

Not really easy to enable as well. I'd say the first version could ship without threads/web workers support.

[facekapow]

Oh well! Guess i'll just finish the RNG driver for now.

[formula1]

https://github.com/xk/node-threads-a-gogo/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/audreyt/node-webworker-threads

nodejs/node#1159

nodejs/node#2133

http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:concurrency

Here are some examples of implementations to take inspiration from.

[piranna]

Woah! Threaded WebWorkers on Io.js! :-D

Not sure if The End is near, anyway... :-P
El 11/07/2015 18:30, "Sam Tobia" notifications@github.com escribió:

https://github.com/xk/node-threads-a-gogo/blob/master/README.md

https://github.com/audreyt/node-webworker-threads

nodejs/node#1159 nodejs/node#1159

nodejs/node#2133 nodejs/node#2133

http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:concurrency

Here are some examples of implementations to take inspiration from.

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