Async / Non blocking support

[ZergRushJoe]

I would like some interfaces to support tasks/async methods. Right now the main thread is blocked by any network call. This is a problem for using the api client. Workers can also be made async as well for pull loop would allow a cancelation token to be used so the worker can exit gracefully.

The Microsoft docs they use the async methods to avoid threading issues. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/host/hosted-services?view=aspnetcore-7.0&tabs=visual-studio

[mmccord-processunity]

@ZergRushJoe -- I had the same thought. It appears here that it was at one point async and then changed to synchronous. I assume there was some advantage to doing this, but I'm not seeing it. I asked @gardusig (the author of the commit) for comment. Additionally the documentation still indicates async here even though per @gardusig's change, it is now synchronous.

@LPFOXX you may also be interested in this based on your like above.

[gardusig]

Sorry, I'm not part of the company that maintains this repo anymore.

By the time I was mainly focused at managing workers to process tasks in parallel. Like super focused at using a single worker with batch poll, not that many IO operations. Maybe a code review could have helped to discuss that :)

[gardusig]

Quick explanation about overall architecture.

• there's a WorkflowTaskCoordinator responsible for all workers
• each worker is a WorkflowTaskExecutor
• specifically, they each have an infinite independent loop here
• you can see that it polls for a list of tasks and starts a new thread for each here

It was the first time I coded in C#, so I'm not that familiar with its multithreading handling. If the async issue is blocking multiple I/O operations at the same time. I think the code change to make that improvement might be quite short.

[gardusig]

Maybe it's as simple as adding an async before each method declaration and then making the right call at their infinite loop.

private async void Work4Ever()

Then play around with their main startup method

[mmccord-processunity]

Gotcha. Thanks for the info and the prompt reply!

[ZergRushJoe]

Yes can also use task.waitall as a way to run all the batched task at the same time but still wait for all to finsh before getting the next batch.