Lead with what an actor is and how to start one with run()/spawn(),
following gen_server.rs's example-first style. Add a compiling module
doctest. Drop RFC references and em-dashes; keep internal mechanics
(preemption gating, thread-local borrow rules) as plain contributor
comments rather than public-facing doc prose.
send_after_wall / send_after_named_wall (+ Timers::insert_send_wall) arm a
message-delivery timer that opts out of the RFC 007 virtual-time shift and
fires at its raw deadline regardless of injected delay — the Send-reason
sibling of sleep_wall, closing the jar item whose substrate efbc254 landed.
For deadlines that reflect the outside world (protocol timeouts, wall-clock
schedules) rather than workload pacing. cancel_timer is anchor-agnostic and
unchanged; without the feature the API exists and is identical to send_after.
The gen_server timer layer (send_after_to, RFC 015 §5) deliberately stays
virtual-only — an opt-out there means new options on the gen_server/statem
timeout API, out of scope for now.
Tests: wall send fires at raw deadline while a virtual sibling shifts;
cancel on a wall send with debt outstanding; featureless delivery/cancel
smokes through the public named API. 15/15 causal, 34/34 binaries both
feature configs, lib clippy clean both.
New timer anchor: insert_sleep_wall / scheduler::sleep_wall (exported) opt a
Sleep entry out of the RFC 007 virtual-time shift, so it fires at its raw
deadline regardless of injected delay. Featureless config is unchanged (the
API exists but is identical to sleep).
The causal controller's window/cooldown sleeps and the tsc_hz calibration
sleep use it on the actor path (the OS-thread path was already wall). This
fixes the controller's own sleeps dilating under its own injection —
experiment windows stretched ~2x at 50% speedup (337ms -> 646ms injected/
window). Deltas were rate-normalized so results were unbiased; this fixes
sweep cost, not bias. The general wall-anchored-timer-semantics jar item
(user-facing opt-out) remains open; this lands the substrate.
Test: wall_timer_ignores_injected_delay — wall entry fires at raw deadline
while a virtual sibling in the same heap shifts. 13/13 causal, 34/34
binaries both feature configs.
Replace implicit unwrap()/expect() in the lock-ordered core with explicit
match arms. Lock-poison sites use one uniform message
("smarm: <lock> lock poisoned (core corrupt): {e}"); invariant sites panic
with a descriptive message naming the violated invariant. No behaviour
change: each rewrite preserves the prior panic-on-bad-arm semantics. Also
clears the accompanying clippy hygiene in these files (redundant_closure,
len_without_is_empty, too_many_arguments, unnecessary_sort_by,
missing_safety_doc, nonminimal_bool/unnecessary_unwrap).
These three RFC-015 tests call run() (the real runtime), so under
--cfg loom they construct loom atomics outside a loom::model block and
panic with "cannot access Loom execution state from outside a Loom
model". They are unit tests of runtime behavior, not state-machine
models. Gate the module #[cfg(all(test, not(loom)))], matching the
existing run_queue::tests precedent: they still run under normal
cargo test, and the loom build is now 28/28 clean.
Add a cancellable message-delivery timer on the existing timer.rs min-heap,
the substrate the gen_server time idioms (idle/receive timeout, periodic tick,
debounce/backoff) need.
- Reason::Send { fire }: a type-erased delivery thunk. send_after (Pid<A>, via
send_to) and send_after_named (Name<M>, via send) capture dest+msg and
resolve the address on fire, not at arm time, so a dead target / restarted
name is observed when it fires; a failed resolve or closed inbox is dropped
(Erlang erlang:send_after semantics).
- Cancellation via an "armed" set keyed on the entry seq, exposed as an opaque
TimerId. Only Send timers use it; Sleep/WaitTimeout keep their inert-stale
behaviour untouched. pop_due fires a Send only while still armed and removes
it, so cancel returns true iff it landed before the fire (the race signal).
cancel is unscoped: any holder of the id can cancel (e.g. racing two servers
and cancelling the slow path).
- peek_deadline contract documented as "<= true next deadline" so a future
hierarchical timing wheel can back Timers without touching send_after or the
scheduler idle path. call_timeout left on recv_timeout (blast radius).
Tests: Timers-level (fire/cancel/race/clear/ordering) plus scheduler-level
delivery for both Name<M> and Pid<A>, cancel-prevents-delivery, and silent
drop on unresolved name / dead pid. Green on rq-mutex/rq-mpmc/rq-striped.
Implements the new addressing surface the examples in examples/ specify:
- spawn_addr::<A>(FnOnce(Receiver<A::Msg>)) -> Pid<A>: the typed-path
producer. Makes the inbox, spawns the body with its receiver, and publishes
the sender from the PARENT side (registry::install_for) before returning the
pid, so an immediate send_to always resolves (no race on the body installing
itself). Detached, like ServerBuilder::start.
- lookup_as / pick_as / members_as: re-type an erased pid as Pid<A> over the
heterogeneous registry/pg stores, sharing one helper (pid::assert_type).
Unchecked but sound: routing is by message TypeId, so a wrong A degrades to
SendError::NoChannel on the next send, never a misdelivery.
- dispatch::<A>(group, msg) -> Result<Pid<A>, SendError<A::Msg>>: pick_as +
send_to, with the message handed back on failure. New SendError::NoMember
variant for the empty/all-dead group case.
- gen_server naming: ServerName<G> backed internally by the registry's existing
typed-channel store keyed by TypeId::of::<Envelope<G>>() — Envelope stays
private, no separate directory. Type-state NamedServerBuilder<G> keeps the
current infallible ServerBuilder::start() untouched; its start() is fallible
(parent-side register, NameTaken). Free call/cast/whereis_server resolve per
use. ServerRef::shutdown (+ free shutdown) is the sys-style synchronous stop.
- root-exit teardown: the run's initial actor is recorded as root; when it
finalizes it flags root_exited, and the scheduler's idle verdict then stops
the parked-forever remainder (a one-shot RootDrain sweep). Deferred to the
idle point on purpose: the run queue drains first, so actors with queued work
finish rather than unwinding on the stop. This lets a named-server daemon (or
any pinned actor) wind the run down instead of hanging on live_actors > 0.
request_stop is refactored to a request_stop_inner core so the sweep can drive
it from inside the runtime without re-borrowing the thread-local.
Lib + tests + examples build warning-free; full suite green.
Fold the made-up Addr<A> back into the pid, where it belonged. The typed
handle IS the pid now.
- RawPid { index, generation }: today's Pid, renamed — the raw numbers, the key
for identity-only plumbing and the heterogeneous monitor/link/pg tables.
- Pid<A = Erased>: RawPid + phantom actor type. Both an identity and a direct,
identity-bound address; when A: Addressable a send delivers A::Msg to exactly
this incarnation (next phase). Hand-written impls (eq/hash/fmt on the raw
only, no A bounds); fn()->A phantom keeps it Copy+Send+Sync for any A.
- Erased: uninhabited, deliberately NOT Addressable, so a typed send to a
Pid<Erased> won't compile — that's what send_dyn (section 4.6) will be for. It
is the default type arg, so every plain "Pid" written today still compiles as
Pid<Erased>; that, plus the fact that nothing destructures pid fields, is why
an identity change touching 18 files cascaded to zero internal edits.
- Addr<A> deleted; Name<M> / the Phase-2 registry unchanged (they key on raw).
Per the call to make the consumers take typed pids: the user-facing identity
APIs — monitor, link, unlink, request_stop, spawn_under(supervisor), pg::join,
pg::leave — are now generic over A and erase at the boundary; their bodies are
byte-for-byte unchanged. Pure plumbing (unpark, set_current_pid,
register_supervisor_channel) stays erased — it only ever sees internal identity.
Phase 1's Addr tests become Pid<A> tests (identity/copy/erase/Debug, Send+Sync).
Full suite + order-checker green, warning-free across all targets.
request_stop sets the flag and issues a wildcard unpark, but unpark
no-ops on a Queued actor (the pending run "is" the wake). If the
actor's first action on resume is a blocking park — no allocation, no
check!() on the way — the wake-side-only check in park_current is
unreachable: the actor parks with the stop flag already set and no
wake is ever coming. The runtime then idles forever.
Fix: check_cancelled at the ENTRY of park_current, before the switch.
The remaining window (flag lands after the entry check, before the
park) is covered by the existing protocol: the stop's unpark finds
Running / the prep-to-park window, sets Notified, and the park-return
re-queues into the wake-side check. Unwinding from the entry is the
same unwind path as the wake side; leftover wait registrations are
stale-epoch / dead-generation and self-clean at their wakers' failed
CAS.
This is bug #1 of the urus chunk-2 session (bug #2, the terminal
wake, is the preceding commit). Repro: tests/cancel.rs
stop_flagged_while_queued_lands_at_first_park — deadlocks without the
fix (watchdog-bounded), passes in <50ms with it.
FdArm composes fd readiness with channel arms on one wait epoch.
Selectable grows fallible sel_register and an eager-cleanup hook;
losing/stop-unwound/timed-out fd arms are unregistered (waiters entry
+ kernel ONESHOT) so the fd is never poisoned. try_select /
try_select_timeout surface registration errors (EBADF, EMFILE,
AlreadyExists) instead of RFC 008's permanently-ready lean, which
would busy-loop a healthy-but-unregistrable fd; select/select_timeout
stay infallible for channel-only arms. Adds wait_readable_timeout /
wait_writable_timeout as one-arm selects.
Known benign race (pre-existing, slightly widened): a queued FdReady
racing the cleanup DEL can spuriously wake a fresh waiter on that fd;
absorbed by select's defensive re-loop. Fixable by epoch-stamping
completions.
A stopped actor unwinding out of wait_fd's park leaked its waiters entry
and the kernel-side EPOLLONESHOT registration; the stale entry then failed
every future wait_*() on that fd with AlreadyExists (the defensive bare DEL
in epoll_register sits behind the contains_key check, so it never ran).
Fix where the invariant breaks: a drop guard in wait_fd, armed after a
successful register and forgotten on the normal wake (where FdReady already
removed + DEL'd). On unwind it cleans up iff the entry is still this wait's
(pid, epoch) — an entry consumed by a racing FdReady means the fd may carry
another actor's fresh registration, which must be left alone. Closes the
v0.2 fd-hygiene TODO.
select(&[&dyn Selectable]) -> usize registers (pid, epoch) in every arm
under one wait epoch, parks once, and returns the first ready index in
documented priority order (BEAM-style; no fairness promise). A closed arm
counts as ready — and stays ready forever, so callers drop it from the set
once observed. Losing arms need no cancellation pass: the winning wake
consumed the epoch, so their registrations die at their wakers' failed CAS
or are overwritten by the receiver's next wait on that channel (the
single-receiver debug_asserts relax to 'none or own pid' accordingly).
The one genuinely new protocol piece is the no-park exit: returning with an
arm ready at registration time leaves earlier arms holding LIVE-epoch
registrations, whose wakes could fault a later one-shot park as a pending
notification. scheduler::retire_wait closes it — bump the epoch (in-flight
wakes die at their CAS), eat a notification that already landed
(StateWord::clear_notify), then re-observe the stop flag, in that order.
Proved by the new loom theorem retire_eats_late_arm_notification; the
integration probes in tests/select.rs fire stale loser-arm wakes and assert
a subsequent sleep's one-shot park holds its full duration.
The slot epoch is THE wait identity, so the hand-rolled per-primitive copies
go away: channel loses cur_wait/next_wait_seq/timed_out, mutex loses Wait.seq
and next_seq, TimerTarget::on_timeout takes the epoch. Registrations become
(pid, epoch) — channel parked_receiver, mutex waiters, io fd waiters,
Blocking io completions, sleep timers, joiner lists — and their wakers move
to unpark_at. begin_wait is lock-free, so each primitive opens the wait
inside the same critical section that publishes the registration.
recv_timeout's wake-classification loop collapses: wakes are precise, so
queue → Ok, senders==0 → Disconnected, else Timeout — the 'Defensive'
re-register branch is now unreachable by protocol, not by audit. Same for
Mutex::lock_timeout's one-shot park.
End-state invariant, auditable in one sentence: the only wildcard wake is
request_stop, which is terminal.
State machine extracted to src/slot_state.rs as a standalone unit (StateWord:
publish_queued / try_claim / yield_return / park_return / unpark / set_done /
reclaim, plus the Status view for cold paths). runtime.rs keeps the protocol
rationale and consumes the mechanism; every transition self-asserts its
precondition per the assert-the-invariants rule.
src/sync_shim.rs: std vs loom indirection (atomics + UnsafeCell with the
with/with_mut access API) for the two loom-modeled modules. Loom models run
the PRODUCTION code, not a replica:
- slot_state: no-lost-wakeup (park vs unpark), two-unparkers-one-enqueue,
stale-unpark-never-hits-reused-slot (the ABA theorem), unpark-vs-claim.
- run_queue: mpmc exactly-once through a lap wraparound, push/pop race,
striped two-producer drain.
RUSTFLAGS="--cfg loom" cargo test --lib --release — 7 models, all pass.
RawMutex deliberately not loom-modeled (futexes can't be; textbook mutex3
with stress + unwind coverage).
Assertion sweep (invariants now checked at the point of reliance):
- enqueue debug-asserts the word reads EXACTLY (gen, Queued) — the
at-most-once-enqueued invariant the ring capacity proof leans on.
- RawMutex enforces the leaf rule mechanically: debug-build thread-local
held-count, panics at the acquisition that violates it.
- live_actors underflow (double finalize) asserted.
- StateWord transition preconditions asserted (yield/park/done/reclaim/
publish/claim).
Audit: with_runtime, RawMutex guards, run-queue ops, and trace::record all
gate preemption (and thereby the stop sentinel) for their span; trace was
already self-gating. Sole remaining exception is the channel std MutexGuard
— the documented first post-v0.5 fast-follow.
Review fixes to the branched-in work:
- slot_state::status_for mapped (matching gen, Vacant) to Stale instead of
unreachable!: Pid::new is public, so a forged/never-issued pid (e.g.
monitor(Pid::new(5,0)) on a fresh slab) could reach it — "no such actor"
is the correct total answer; issued pids still can't get there.
- Tightened enqueue's assert from Status::Live to the exact (gen, Queued)
word its own comment argues for.
Validated: 22 suites in debug (all asserts + leaf counter live) for
rq-mutex/rq-mpmc/rq-striped, release for rq-mutex, smarm-trace build +
stress, loom 7/7.
The slot table split (ROADMAP_v0.5 phase 2): slot lookup is lock-free, the
run path (yield/park/unpark/pop/resume) takes zero locks beyond the queue
mutex itself, and SharedState shrinks to { run_queue }.
Core pieces:
- src/raw_mutex.rs: hand-rolled 3-state futex mutex (Drepper mutex3),
non-poisoning; the guard enters NoPreempt, which both bounds hold times and
structurally closes the unwind-under-lock hole (the stop sentinel shares
the gate). Used for per-slot cold data, the free list, and the stack pool.
- Fixed slab Box<[Slot]> (default max_actors = 16_384, ~4 MiB, align(128)
against false sharing). Slots never move -> stable addresses, lock-free
index. Exhaustion panics loudly, naming Config::max_actors(n) as the fix.
Unbounded/segmented slab stays deferred (see ROADMAP).
- Per-slot AtomicU64 packing (generation << 32 | state), states
Vacant/Queued/Running/RunningNotified/Parked/Done. Every transition CASes
the packed word, so the generation check is atomic with the transition: no
ABA, no spurious unparks on recycled slots. RunningNotified replaces the
pending_unpark bool (the lost-wakeup window is a state, not a flag) and
uniformly fixes a LATENT LOST WAKEUP in the old Blocking-IO completion
path, which set the result for a still-Running actor without flagging it.
- Invariant: a pid is in the run queue at most once (pushes pair 1:1 with
transitions into Queued; only the scheduler does Queued->Running). This is
what makes phase 3's bounded rings sound.
- sp -> relaxed AtomicUsize; stop flag + first-resume closure as AtomicPtrs
(closure double-boxed for a thin pointer, swap-to-take): the resume path is
fully atomic.
- finalize_actor: Done published under the dying slot's cold lock (join's
check-or-register is linearized by it); link cascade locks peers ONE AT A
TIME (cold locks are leaves) with the acyclicity argument written at the
site; link() registers on the target first, then self (stale self-entries
are benign, every walk re-verifies the peer's word).
- Termination by counters: live_actors incremented in spawn pre-enqueue,
decremented at the very END of finalize after all wakeup enqueues; exit on
io_out == 0 (read before the queue lock, phase-1 ordering) && queue empty
&& live == 0. Soundness note at the site: any enqueue targets a live actor.
- spawn boxes the closure and acquires the stack BEFORE any runtime lock: no
allocation ever happens under a global lock anymore.
- with_runtime/try_with_runtime now enter NoPreempt for their full span.
This fixes a bug the rework exposed: install_actor allocated with
preemption enabled while the RUNTIME RefCell borrow was live; a timeslice
preemption there migrates the actor across OS threads and the borrow guard
increments one thread's RefCell count and decrements another's — underflow
to 'permanently mutably borrowed', cascading panics (caught by stress
suite: deterministic non-unwinding-panic abort in lost_wakeup_many_pairs).
The old code was safe only by accident; now it's structural.
- Behavior note: request_stop on a RUNNING target now marks it
RunningNotified, so its next park returns immediately to an observation
point — faster stop observation; parked/queued/done semantics unchanged.
Validated: 22 suites green in release (1/2/8-thread oversubscribed on the
1-core sandbox) and in debug with all debug_asserts live; stress suite x5.
- next_monitor_id -> AtomicU64 on RuntimeInner
- timers -> own Mutex<Timers>; io -> own Mutex<Option<IoThread>> (lock order: io-before-shared)
- pending_closures Vec folded into Slot::pending_closure
- termination check reads io liveness before shared; ordering argument documented
- poison fix: check_cancelled() no longer fires while preemption is disabled,
so a cancellation unwind can never poison a runtime/channel mutex
- regression test: tests/poison_stop.rs
- ROADMAP_v0.5.md added
Add Erlang-style process links so an abnormal death fate-shares across a
link set, with trap_exit to convert that into a message instead.
- Slot.links: Vec<Pid>, bidirectional; reset in all three lifecycle sites.
- Actor.trap: Option<Sender<ExitSignal>>, fresh per spawn (a restarted
child starts un-trapped; no fourth reset site).
- link/unlink free functions on self_pid(); trap_exit() -> Receiver<ExitSignal>
(a dedicated inbox, distinct from the monitor Down channel).
- finalize_actor clears reverse links under the lock (always; keeps the
cascade acyclic), then propagates abnormal deaths post-lock: trapping peer
gets an ExitSignal message and survives, non-trapping peer is request_stop'd.
Normal exit never propagates. Dead-pid link delivers an immediate NoProc
(message if trapping, else request_stop(self) -- never a silent no-op).
- ExitSignal reuses DownReason and carries no panic payload (joiner-only).
Tests in tests/link.rs cover the propagate/trap/normal/dead-pid/unlink cases.
request_stop(pid) sets a per-actor flag and wakes a parked target. The
actor realizes the stop as a controlled unwind at its next observation
point (check!()/alloc via maybe_preempt, or the wakeup side of any
blocking park): a StopSentinel panic tears the stack down via the
trampoline's existing catch_unwind, running Drop, and is reported as the
new Outcome::Stopped (distinct from a user Panic).
Death surface kept distinct from Exit: Signal::Stopped(pid) +
DownReason::Stopped, so the supervisor await logic to come can tell a
requested stop apart from a self-termination.
Flag lives on Actor behind Arc<AtomicBool>; the scheduler resume path
takes a raw pointer into it (no per-resume refcount traffic), keeping
yield throughput at baseline.
`monitor(pid) -> Receiver<Down>` lets any actor watch any other and
receive a single Down{pid, reason} when it terminates. Generalizes the
existing single supervisor_channel (which is just a hard-wired monitor
the parent installs at spawn).
- src/monitor.rs: Down / DownReason{Exit,Panic,NoProc} + monitor().
Payload-free: a panic payload has one owner and goes to the joiner via
JoinError, so monitors learn only that it panicked. Monitoring an
already-gone pid yields NoProc immediately.
- runtime: Slot grows `monitors: Vec<Sender<Down>>`; finalize_actor
drains and notifies them outside the shared lock (send can unpark a
receiver, which re-takes the non-reentrant mutex). Cleared in
reclaim_slot and on slot reuse at spawn.
- Registration and finalize both serialize on the shared mutex, so a
target alive at registration always delivers a real Down (no race
between liveness check and registration).
tests/monitor.rs: Exit, Panic, NoProc-on-dead-target, and fan-out to
multiple monitors. Full suite green.
Three changes, each independently measured, landed together.
Fuse pre-resume mutex acquisitions
-----------------------------------
The schedule loop previously took the shared lock three separate times
per actor resume: once to pop the run queue, once to read the stack
pointer, and once to pop the first-resume closure. These are now a
single acquisition that returns everything needed to resume the actor.
As a side effect, pending_closures was changed from a Vec<(Pid, Closure)>
with O(n) linear scan to a Vec<Option<Closure>> indexed by slot index,
making first-closure lookup O(1).
Move stack allocation outside the shared lock
----------------------------------------------
Stack::new() (mmap + mprotect) was previously called inside with_shared,
stalling every other scheduler thread for the duration of two syscalls on
every spawn. It now runs before the lock is acquired.
Stack pool
----------
Rather than munmap-ing a stack when an actor finishes and mmap-ing a fresh
one on the next spawn, stacks are now recycled through a per-Runtime pool
(Mutex<Vec<Stack>>). finalize_actor extracts the stack from the Actor
before clearing the slot and pushes it to the pool outside the shared lock.
spawn_under pops from the pool before falling back to Stack::new().
The pool is unbounded for now (shrink policy TBD) but capped at
stack_pool_cap stacks on return, defaulting to thread_count * 4.
The cap is configurable via Config::stack_pool_cap(n).
Results (24-thread, against stored baseline)
--------------------------------------------
chained_spawn smarm 1-thread: 9763 → 261 µs (-97%)
chained_spawn smarm 24-thread: 23562 → 838 µs (-96%)
ping_pong_oneshot smarm 1-thread: 18409 → 742 µs (-96%)
ping_pong_oneshot smarm 24-thread: 44596 → 1425 µs (-97%)
catch_unwind_panics smarm 24-thread: 267812 → 124094 µs (-54%)
fan_out_compute smarm 24-thread: 2839 → 2226 µs (-22%)
Tokio regressions in the checker output are baseline measurement drift;
no tokio code was changed.
Add `Config::alloc_interval()` and `Config::timeslice_cycles()` so
callers can tune preemption sensitivity at runtime. The values flow
through `RuntimeInner` and are written into per-scheduler-thread locals
via a new `configure_preempt()` call at thread startup, keeping the hot
path free of cross-thread coherency traffic.
Fix unused-variable warnings in channel.rs by inlining `current_pid()`
directly into `te!` macro arguments — since the no-op macro arm never
evaluates its argument, no binding is needed at the call site.
Clean up a handful of dead imports exposed by the refactor.
Adds a BinaryHeap of timer entries on SchedulerState. sleep() inserts
an entry and parks; schedule_loop pops due entries each iteration and
unparks them. When the run queue is empty but timers are pending, the
OS thread sleeps until the soonest deadline.
Single-threaded only; thread::sleep is fine because no other thread
can wake us. The IO thread coming next will need a Condvar or pipe
wakeup to break this OS-sleep early.
Hand-rolled context switching on mmap'd stacks with guard pages,
allocator-driven RDTSC preemption, unbounded MPSC channels, supervision
via per-slot Signal mailboxes, root supervisor as sentinel PID.
Lib + tests + benches clean check/clippy. All 29 tests pass.
Bench: smarm 3.4% over serial baseline, within 160us of tokio
current-thread on prime-counting fan-out.
Markk116
Claude (sandbox)