taskgroup

A *taskgroup.Group represents a group of goroutines working on related tasks. New tasks can be added to the group at will, and the caller can wait until all tasks are complete. Errors are automatically collected and delivered synchronously to a user-provided callback. This does not replace the full generality of Go's built-in features, but it simplifies some of the plumbing for common concurrent tasks.

Here is a working example in the Go Playground.

Contents

• Rationale
• Overview
• Filtering Errors
• Controlling Concurrency
• Solo Tasks
• Gathering Results

Rationale

Go provides powerful concurrency primitives, including goroutines, channels, select, and the standard library's sync package. In some common situations, however, managing goroutine lifetimes can become unwieldy using only what is built in.

For example, consider the case of copying a large directory tree: Walk through a source directory recursively, creating a parallel target directory structure and starting a goroutine to copy each of the files concurrently. In outline:

func copyTree(source, target string) error {
    err := filepath.Walk(source, func(path string, fi os.FileInfo, err error) error {
        adjusted := adjustPath(path)
        if fi.IsDir() {
            return os.MkdirAll(adjusted, 0755)
        }
        go copyFile(adjusted, target)
        return nil
    })
    if err != nil {
        // ... clean up the output directory ...
    }
    return err
}

This solution is deficient, however, as it does not provide any way to detect when all the file copies are finished. To do that we will typically use a sync.WaitGroup:

var wg sync.WaitGroup
...
wg.Add(1)
go func() {
    defer wg.Done()
    copyFile(adjusted, target)
}()
...
wg.Wait() // block until all the tasks signal done

In addition, we need to handle errors. Copies might fail (the disk may fill, or there might be a permissions error). For some applications it might suffice to log the error and continue, but usually in case of error we should back out and clean up the partial state.

To do that, we need to capture the return value from the function inside the goroutine―and that will require us either to add a lock or plumb in another channel:

errs := make(chan error)
...
go copyFile(adjusted, target, errs)

Since multiple operations can be running in parallel, we will also need another goroutine to drain the errors channel and accumulate the results somewhere:

var failures []error
go func() {
    for e := range errs {
        failures = append(failures, e)
    }
}()
...
wg.Wait()
close(errs)

Once the work is finished, we must also detect when the error collector is done, so we can examine the failures without a data race. We'll need another channel or wait group to signal for this:

var failures []error
edone := make(chan struct{})
go func() {
    defer close(edone)
    for e := range errs {
        failures = append(failures, e)
    }
}()
...
wg.Wait()   // all the workers are done
close(errs) // signal the error collector to stop
<-edone     // wait for the error collector to be done

Another issue is, if one of the file copies fails, we don't necessarily want to wait around for all the copies to finish before reporting the error―we want to stop everything and clean up the whole operation. Typically we would do this using a context.Context:

	ctx, cancel := context.WithCancel(context.Background())
	defer cancel()
	...
	copyFile(ctx, adjusted, target, errs)

Now copyFile will have to check for ctx to be finished:

func copyFile(ctx context.Context, source, target string, errs chan<- error) {
	if ctx.Err() != nil {
		return
	}
 	// ... do the copy as normal, or propagate an error
}

Finally, we want the ability to to limit the number of concurrent copies. Even if the host has plenty of memory and CPU, unbounded concurrency is likely to run us out of file descriptors. To handle this we might use a semaphore or a throttling channel:

throttle := make(chan struct{}, 64) // allow up to 64 concurrent copies
go func() {
    throttle <- struct{}{} // block until the throttle has a free slot
    defer func() { wg.Done(); <-throttle }()
    copyFile(ctx, adjusted, target, errs)
}()

So far, we're up to four channels (errs, edone, context, and throttle) plus a wait group. The point to note is that while these tools are quite able to express what we want, it can be tedious to wire them all together and keep track of the current state of the system.

The taskgroup package exists to handle the plumbing for the common case of a group of tasks that are all working on a related outcome (e.g., copying a directory structure), and where an error on the part of any single task may be grounds for terminating the work as a whole.

The package provides a taskgroup.Group type that has built-in support for some of these concerns:

• Limiting the number of active goroutines.
• Collecting and filtering errors.
• Waiting for completion and delivering status.

A taskgroup.Group collects error values from each task and can deliver them to a user-provided callback. The callback can filter them or take other actions (such as cancellation). Invocations of the callback are all done from a single goroutine so it is safe to manipulate local resources without a lock.

A group does not directly support cancellation, but integrates cleanly with the standard context package. A context.CancelFunc can be used as a trigger to signal the whole group when an error occurs.

Overview

A task is expressed as a func() error, and is added to a group using the Go method:

var g taskgroup.Group
g.Go(myTask)

Any number of tasks may be added, and it is safe to do so from multiple goroutines concurrently. To wait for the tasks to finish, use:

err := g.Wait()

Wait blocks until all the tasks in the group have returned, and then reports the first non-nil error returned by any of the worker tasks.

An implementation of this example can be found in examples/copytree/copytree.go.

Filtering Errors

The taskgroup.New function takes an optional callback to be invoked for each non-nil error reported by a task in the group. The callback may choose to propagate, replace, or discard the error. For example, suppose we want to ignore "file not found" errors from a copy operation:

g := taskgroup.New(func(err error) error {
    if os.IsNotExist(err) {
        return nil // ignore files that do not exist
    }
    return err
})

This mechanism can also be used to trigger a context cancellation if a task fails, for example:

ctx, cancel := context.WithCancel(context.Background())
defer cancel()

g := taskgroup.New(cancel)

Now, if a task in g reports an error, it will cancel the context, allowing any other running tasks to observe a context cancellation and bail out.

Controlling Concurrency

The Limit method supports limiting the number of concurrently active goroutines in the group. It returns a start function that adds goroutines to the group, but will will block when the limit of goroutines is reached until some of the goroutines already running have finished.

For example:

// Allow at most 3 concurrently-active goroutines in the group.
g, start := taskgroup.New(nil).Limit(3)

// Start tasks by calling the function returned by taskgroup.Limit:
start(task1)
start(task2)
start(task3)
start(task4) // blocks until one of the previous tasks is finished
// ...

Solo Tasks

In some cases it is useful to start a single background task to handle an isolated concern (elsewhere sometimes described as a "promise" or a "future").

For example, suppose we want to run some expensive background cleanup task while we take care of other work. Rather than create a whole group for a single goroutine we can create a solo task using the Go or Run functions:

s := taskgroup.Go(func() error {
    for _, v := range itemsToClean {
        if err := cleanup(v); err != nil {
            return err
        }
    }
    return nil
})

Once we're ready, we can Wait for this task to collect its result:

if err := s.Wait(); err != nil {
    log.Printf("WARNING: Cleanup failed: %v", err)
}

Solo tasks are also helpful for functions that return a value. For example, suppose we want to read a file while we handle other matters. The Call function creates a solo task from such a function:

s := taskgroup.Call(func() ([]byte, error) {
    return os.ReadFile(filePath)
})

As before, we can Wait for the result when we're ready:

// N.B.: Wait returns a taskgroup.Result, whose Get method unpacks
// it into a value and an error like a normal function call.
data, err := s.Wait().Get()
if err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("Read configuration: %v", err)
}
doThingsWith(data)

Gathering Results

One common use for a background task is accumulating the results from a batch of concurrent workers. This could be handled by a solo task, as described above, but it is a common enough pattern that the library provides a Gatherer type to handle it specifically.

To use it, pass a function to Gather to receive the values:

var g taskgroup.Group

var sum int
c := taskgroup.Gather(g.Go, func(v int) { sum += v })

The Call, Run, and Report methods of c can now be used to start tasks in g that yield values, and deliver those values to the accumulator:

• c.Call takes a func() (T, error), returning a value and an error. If the task reports an error, that error is returned as usual. Otherwise, its non-error value is gathered by the callback.

• c.Run takes a func() T, returning only a value, which is gathered by the callback.

• c.Report takes a func(func(T)) error, which allows a task to report multiple values to the gatherer via a "report" callback. The task itself returns only an error, but it may call its argument any number of times to gather values.

Calls to the callback are serialized so that it is safe to access state without additional locking:

// Report an error, no value is gathered.
c.Call(func() (int, error) {
    return -1, errors.New("bad")
})

// No error, send gather the value 25.
c.Call(func() (int, error) {
    return 25, nil
})

// Gather a random integer.
c.Run(func() int { return rand.Intn(1000) })

// Gather the values 10, 20, and 30.
//
// Note that even if the function reports an error, any values it sent
// before returning are still gathered.
c.Report(func(report func(int)) error {
    report(10)
    report(20)
    report(30)
    return nil
})

Once all the tasks passed to the gatherer are complete, it is safe to access the values accumulated by the callback:

g.Wait()  // wait for tasks to finish

// Now you can access the values accumulated by c.
fmt.Println(sum)