My rust program is managing memory for a 2d html canvas context, and I'm trying to hit ~60fps. I can calculate the delta between each frame easily, and it turns out to be roughly ~5ms.
I'm unclear on how to put my Rust webassembly program to sleep for the remaining 11ms. One option would be to have JavaScript call into Rust on every requestAnimationFrame and use that as the driver, but I'm curious to keep it all in Rust if possible.
I'm effectively looking for the Rust equivalent of JavaScript's setTimeout(renderNext, 11) when compiling out to the wasm target.
In your requestAnimationFrame callback, call setTimeout, and have that in turn make the next call to requestAnimationFrame. You can see the JS version of this here.
Based on the example in the wasm-bindgen book, here's how I do this in Rust:
fn animate_limited(mut draw_frame: impl FnMut() + 'static, max_fps: i32) {
// Based on:
// https://rustwasm.github.io/docs/wasm-bindgen/examples/request-animation-frame.html#srclibrs
// https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch15-05-interior-mutability.html
let animate_cb = Rc::new(RefCell::new(None));
let animate_cb2 = animate_cb.clone();
let timeout_cb = Rc::new(RefCell::new(None));
let timeout_cb2 = timeout_cb.clone();
let w = window();
*timeout_cb2.borrow_mut() = Some(Closure::wrap(Box::new(move || {
request_animation_frame(&w, animate_cb.borrow().as_ref().unwrap());
}) as Box<dyn FnMut()>));
let w2 = window();
*animate_cb2.borrow_mut() = Some(Closure::wrap(Box::new(move || {
draw_frame();
set_timeout(&w2, timeout_cb.borrow().as_ref().unwrap(), 1000 / max_fps);
}) as Box<dyn FnMut()>));
request_animation_frame(&window(), animate_cb2.borrow().as_ref().unwrap());
}
fn window() -> web_sys::Window {
web_sys::window().expect("no global `window` exists")
}
fn request_animation_frame(window: &web_sys::Window, f: &Closure<dyn FnMut()>) -> i32 {
window
.request_animation_frame(f.as_ref().unchecked_ref())
.expect("should register `requestAnimationFrame` OK")
}
fn set_timeout(window: &web_sys::Window, f: &Closure<dyn FnMut()>, timeout_ms: i32) -> i32 {
window
.set_timeout_with_callback_and_timeout_and_arguments_0(
f.as_ref().unchecked_ref(),
timeout_ms,
)
.expect("should register `setTimeout` OK")
}
Then you simply pass animate_limited a function to do your drawing (a closure like move || { /* drawing logic here */ } will do the trick), and the maximum framerate you want.
There are almost certainly improvements to be made, there. I'm very new to Rust and just spent far too long figuring out how to make this work. Hopefully this makes it quicker for someone else in the future.
I'm effectively looking for the Rust equivalent of JavaScript's setTimeout(renderNext, 11) when compiling out to the wasm target.
There are several Rust crates that have bindings to the JavaScript web API, most notably web-sys. Take a look at the documentation for one of the setTimeout overloads.
This is not really a Rust equivalent though, as it pretty directly calls the JS function. But you won't be able to get around that: sleeping or getting the current time are both functions that the host environment has to offer. They cannot be implemented in the raw language alone.
One option would be to have JavaScript call into Rust on every requestAnimationFrame and use that as the driver, but I'm curious to keep it all in Rust if possible.
Yes, you should use requestAnimationFrame (link to web-sys docs). This is much preferred over timing it yourself. In particular, this method will also pause calling your code when the tab is not active and stuff like that. In a desktop environment you would do the same: ask the host environment (i.e. the operating system, often via OpenGL or so) to synchronize your program to screen refreshes.
Related
I'm trying to build an NES emulator using winit, which entails building a game loop which should run exactly 60 times per second.
At first, I used std::thread to create a separate thread where the game loop would run and wait 16 milliseconds before running again. This worked quite well, until I tried to compile the program again targeting WebAssembly. I then found out that both winit::window::Window and winit::event_loop::EventLoopProxy are not Send when targeting Wasm, and that std::thread::spawn panics in Wasm.
After some struggle, I decided to try to do the same thing using task::spawn_local from one of the main asynchronous runtimes. Ultimately, I went with async_std.
I'm not used to asynchronous programming, so I'm not even sure if what I'm trying to do could work.
My idea is to do something like this:
use winit::{window::WindowBuilder, event_loop::EventLoop};
use std::time::Duration;
fn main() {
let event_loop = EventLoop::new();
let _window = WindowBuilder::new()
.build(&event_loop);
async_std::task::spawn_local(async {
// game loop goes here
loop {
// [update game state]
// [update frame buffer]
// [send render event with EventLoopProxy]
async_std::task::sleep(Duration::from_millis(16)).await;
// ^ note: I'll be using a different sleep function with Wasm
}
});
event_loop.run(move |event, _, control_flow| {
control_flow.set_wait();
match event {
// ...
_ => ()
}
});
}
The problem with this approach is that the game loop will never run. If I'm not mistaken, some asynchronous code in the main thread would need to be blocked (by calling .await) for the runtime to poll other Futures, such as the one spawned by the spawn_local function. I can't do this easily, since event_loop.run is not asynchronous.
Having time to await other events shouldn't be a problem, since the control flow is set to wait.
Testing this on native code, nothing inside the game loop ever runs. Testing this on Wasm code (with wasm_timer::Delay as the sleep function), the game loop does run, but at a very low framerate and with long intervals of halting.
Having explained my situation, I would like to ask: is it possible to do what I'm trying to do, and if it is, how would I approach it? I will also accept answers telling me how I could try to do this differently, such as by using web workers.
Thanks in advance!
I just started learning asynchronous Rust, so this is propably not a difficult question to answer, however, I am scratching my head here.
I am not trying to run tasks in parallel yet, only trying to get them to run concurrently.
According to the guide at https://rust-lang.github.io/async-book/,
The futures::join macro makes it possible to wait for multiple different futures to complete while executing them all concurrently.
So when I create 2 Futures, I should be able to "await" both of them at once. It also states that
Whereas calling a blocking function in a synchronous method would block the whole thread, blocked Futures will yield control of the thread, allowing other Futures to run.
From what I understand here, if I await multiple Futures with join!, should the first one be blocked, the second one will start running.
So I made a very simple example where I created 2 async fns and tried to join! both, making sure the first one gets blocked. I used a mpsc::channel for the blocking, since the docs stated that thread::sleep() should not be used in async fns and that recv()
will always block the current thread if there is no data available
However, the behavior is not what I expected, as calling the blocking function will not yield control of the thread, allowing the other Future to run, like I would expect from the second quote I provided. Instead, it will just wait untill it is no longer blocked, finish the first Future and only then start the second. Pretty much as if they were synchronous and I would have just called one after the other.
My complete example code:
use std::{thread::{self}, sync::{mpsc::{self, Sender, Receiver}}, time::Duration};
use futures::{executor}; //added futures = "0.3" in cargo.toml dependencies
fn main(){
let fut = main_async();
executor::block_on(fut);
}
async fn main_async(){
let (sender, receiver) = mpsc::channel();
let thread_handle = std::thread::spawn(move || { //this thread is just here so the f1 function gets blocked by something and can later resume
wait_send_function(sender);
});
let f1 = f1(receiver);
let f2 = f2();
futures::join!(f1, f2);
thread_handle.join().unwrap();
}
fn wait_send_function(sender: Sender<i32>){
thread::sleep(Duration::from_millis(5000));
sender.send(1234).unwrap();
}
async fn f1(receiver: Receiver<i32>){
println!("starting f1");
let new_nmbr = receiver.recv().unwrap(); //I would expect f2 to start now, since this is blocking
println!("Received nmbr is: {}", new_nmbr);
}
async fn f2(){
println!("starting f2");
}
And the output is simply:
starting f1
Received nmbr is: 1234
starting f2
My question is what am I missing here, why does f2 only start after f1 is completed and what would I need to do to get the behavior I want (completing f2 first if f1 is blocked and then waiting for f1)?
Maybe the book is a little misleading, but when it refers to "a blocked future", it does not mean in the sense of blocking synchronous code (if that was the case, there would be no problem to use std::thread::sleep()), but rather, it means that the future is waiting to be polled by the executor.
Thus, std::mpsc that blocks the thread will not have the desired effect (definitely not on a single-threaded executor like future's, but it's a bad idea on multi-threaded executors too). Use futures::channel::mpsc and everything will work.
The following piece of code is taken from the tokio crate tutorial
use tokio::io::{self, AsyncWriteExt};
use tokio::fs::File;
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> io::Result<()> {
let mut file = File::create("foo.txt").await?;
// Writes some prefix of the byte string, but not necessarily all of it.
let n = file.write(b"some bytes").await?;
println!("Wrote the first {} bytes of 'some bytes'.", n);
Ok(())
}
Why do we need to .await when creating a file?
let mut file = File::create("foo.txt").await?;
In other words, why do we need to create a file asynchronously? After all, we can't write to a file if it is not created yet, and hence it's enough simply to block on creating. If it creates successfully then write to it asynchronously, otherwise simply return an error. I definitely miss something.
UPDATE:
Please don't try to long-explain what asynchronous programming is, or what .await does. I know these topics very well. My question is: what is the reason in this example of creating a file asynchronously?
There is no practical reason to use .await in this simplistic example. One could argue this is a bad example, as it does not show any performance improvement over normal synchronous programming. However, a practical example of async is typically more complex, and the purpose of this example is to introduce the basic syntax.
Working with the file system is an asynchronous task. You are requesting to either write or read from the operating system which works independently of your program. your program can do other stuff while the file is loading. Await basically tells your program to stop execution of this function until the data requested is ready.
To copy a file asynchronously, will something like this work?
let filecopyasync (source, target) =
let task = Task.Run((fun () ->File.Copy(source, target, true)))
// do other stuff
Async.AwaitIAsyncResult task
In particular, will this fire up a new thread to do the copy while I "do other stuff"?
UPDATE:
Found another solution:
let asyncFileCopy (source, target, overwrite) =
printfn "Copying %s to %s" source target
let fn = new Func<string * string * bool, unit>(File.Copy)
Async.FromBeginEnd((source, target, overwrite), fn.BeginInvoke, fn.EndInvoke)
let copyfile1 = asyncFileCopy("file1", "file2", true)
let copyfile2 = asyncFileCopy("file3", "file4", true)
[copyfile1; copyfile2] |> seq |> Async.Parallel |> Async.RunSynchronously |> ignore
Your question is conflating two issues, namely multithreading and asychrony. It's important to realise that these things are entirely different concepts:
Asychrony is about a workflow of tasks where we respond to the completion of those tasks independently of the main program flow.
Multithreading is an execution model, one which can be used to implement asychrony, although asychrony can be acheived in other ways (such as hardware interrupts).
Now, when it comes to I/O, the question you should not be asking is "Can I spin up another thread to do it for me?"
Why, you ask?
If you do some I/O in the main thread, you typically block the main thread waiting for results. If you evade this problem by creating a new thread, you haven't actually solved the issue, you've just moved it around. Now you've blocked either a new thread that you've created or a thread pool thread. Oh dear, same problem.
Threads are an expensive and valuable resources and shouldn't be squandered on waiting for blocking I/O to complete.
So, what is the real solution?
Well, we achieve asynchrony via one of these other approaches. That way, we can request that the OS perform some I/O and request that it let us know when the I/O operation is complete. That way, the thread is not blocked while we're waiting for results. In Windows, this is implemented via something called I/O completion ports.
How do I do this in F#?
The .NET CopyToAsync method is probably the easiest approach. Since this returns a plain task, it's helpful to create a helper method:
type Async with
static member AwaitPlainTask (task : Task) =
task.ContinueWith(ignore) |> Async.AwaitTask
Then
[<Literal>]
let DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE = 4096
let copyToAsync source dest =
async {
use sourceFile = new FileStream(source, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read, DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE, true);
use destFile = new FileStream(dest, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None, DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE, true);
do! sourceFile.CopyToAsync(destFile) |> Async.AwaitPlainTask
}
You could then use this with Async.Parallel to perform multiple copies concurrently.
Note: This is different to what you wrote above because File.Copy is a sychronous method that returns unit while CopyToAsync is an async method that returns Task. You cannot magically make synchronous methods asychronous by putting async wrappers around them, instead you need to make sure you are using async all the way down.
You can test it yourself with a few printfns. I found I had to RunAsynchronously to force the main thread to wait for the copy to complete. I'm not sure why the await didn't work, but you can see the expected set of outputs indicating that the copy happened in the background.
open System
open System.IO
open System.Threading
open System.Threading.Tasks
let filecopyasync (source, target) =
let task = Task.Run((fun () ->
printfn "CopyThread: %d" Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId;
Thread.Sleep(10000);
File.Copy(source, target, true); printfn "copydone"))
printfn "mainThread: %d" Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId;
let result=Async.AwaitIAsyncResult task
Thread.Sleep(3000)
printfn "doing stuff"
Async.RunSynchronously result
printfn "done"
Output:
filecopyasync (#"foo.txt",#"bar.txt");;
mainThread: 1
CopyThread: 7
doing stuff
copydone
done
If all you're trying to do is run something on another thread while you do something else, then your initial Task.Run approach should be fine (note that you can get a Task<unit> if you call Task.Run<_> instead of the non-generic Task.Run, which might be marginally easier to deal with).
However, you should be clear about your goals - arguably a "proper" asynchronous file copy wouldn't require a separate .NET thread (which is a relatively heavy-weight primitive) and would rely on operating system features like completion ports instead; since System.IO.File doesn't provide a native CopyAsync method you'd need to write your own (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/35467471/82959 for a simple C# implementation that would be easy to transliterate).
To execute operations on a background thread and avoid blocking the UI in a WPF application, I often find myself writing this pattern:
async {
// some code on the UI thread
let uiThread = SynchronizationContext.Current
do! Async.SwitchToThreadPool()
let! result = // some Async<'t>
do! Async.SwitchToContext uiThread
// do things with the result if it wasn't () all along
}
Am I doing this right at all? Is this idiomatic? Should it be done differently?
If this is correct, of course I would prefer not to have to do it like that all the time - is there a built-in shorter way to achieve the same thing? None of the existing Async functions appears to do something like that.
If not, does it make sense to just turn the above code into a function?
let onThreadPool operation =
async {
let context = SynchronizationContext.Current
do! Async.SwitchToThreadPool()
let! result = operation
do! Async.SwitchToContext context
return result
}
That adds another level of async { } nesting - can this cause issues at "some" point?
What you're doing here definitely makes sense. One useful operation here is Async.StartImmediate, which starts the async workflow on the current thread. If you call this from the UI thread, this guarantees that the workflow will also start on the UI thread and so you can capture the synchronization context inside the workflow.
The other trick is that many built-in asynchronous F# operations automatically jump back to the original synchronization context (those that are created using Async.FromContinuations, including e.g. AsyncDownloadString), so when you're calling one of those, you do not even need to explicitly jump back to the original synchronization context.
But for other asynchronous operations (and for non-async operations that you want to run in the background), your onThreadPool function looks like a great way of doing this.
#random-dev is right capturing the context must happen outside the workflow
let onThreadPool operation =
let context = SynchronizationContext.Current
async {
do! Async.SwitchToThreadPool()
let! result = operation
do! Async.SwitchToContext context
return result
}