Helper thread drop can sometimes take 1 second

This is a writeup of an issue where dropping the helper thread can take up to 1 second on unix (discovered while investigating https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/7844). Here is a repro:

use std::sync::*;
use std::sync::atomic::*;

fn main() {
    let client = jobserver::Client::new(4).unwrap();
    static COUNT: AtomicU32 = AtomicU32::new(0);
    let tokens = Arc::new(Mutex::new(Vec::new()));
    let helper = client.into_helper_thread(move |token| {
        tokens.lock().unwrap().push(token);
        COUNT.fetch_add(1, Ordering::SeqCst);
    }).unwrap();

    // Request more tokens than what are available.
    for _ in 0..5 {
        helper.request_token();
    }
    // Wait for at least some of the requests to finish.
    while COUNT.load(Ordering::SeqCst) < 3 {
        std::thread::yield_now();
    }
    // Drop helper
    let t = std::time::Instant::now();
    drop(helper);
    let d = t.elapsed();
    if d.as_secs_f64() > 0.5 {
        println!("took {:?} seconds!!!!!!!!!!!!!", d);
    }
}

Running this usually (not always) takes about 1 second to drop.

The gist is that if you request too many tokens, and then try to drop the helper thread, it is unable to stop it. The reason is:

for_each_request is stuck on this line, waiting for poll.
Helper::join attempts to wake it up. But the acquire loop does not check why it is being interrupted, and simply tries to go back to polling.

It looks like #22 attempts to address this (and this test seems to pass with that change), but I have not reviewed that PR in detail.

rust-lang / jobserver-rs

Helper thread drop can sometimes take 1 second #23