std: Update std::task docs to reflect modern times

This corrects some misinformation.
This commit is contained in:
Brian Anderson 2014-06-19 15:24:21 -07:00
parent 22d62fc8e1
commit cb89880e6d

View File

@ -8,17 +8,33 @@
// option. This file may not be copied, modified, or distributed
// except according to those terms.
//! Utilities for managing and scheduling tasks
//! Task creation
//!
//! An executing Rust program consists of a collection of lightweight tasks,
//! each with their own stack. Tasks communicate with each other using channels
//! (see `std::comm`) or other forms of synchronization (see `std::sync`) that
//! ensure data-race freedom.
//! An executing Rust program consists of a collection of tasks, each
//! with their own stack and local state. A Rust task is typically
//! backed by an operating system thread, making tasks 'just threads',
//! but may also be implemented via other strategies as well
//! (e.g. Rust comes with the [`green`](../../green/index.html)
//! scheduling crate for creating tasks backed by green threads).
//!
//! Failure in one task does immediately propagate to any others (not to parent,
//! not to child). Failure propagation is instead handled as part of task
//! synchronization. For example, the channel `send()` and `recv()` methods will
//! fail if the other end has hung up already.
//! Tasks generally have their memory *isolated* from each other by
//! virtue of Rust's owned types (which of course may only be owned by
//! a single task at a time). Communication between tasks is primarily
//! done through [channels](../../std/comm/index.html), Rust's
//! message-passing types, though [other forms of task
//! synchronization](../../std/sync/index.html) are often employed to
//! achieve particular performance goals. In particular, types that
//! are guaranteed to be threadsafe are easily shared between threads
//! using the atomically-reference-counted container,
//! [`Arc`](../../std/sync/struct.Arc.html).
//!
//! Fatal logic errors in Rust cause *task failure*, during which
//! a task will unwind the stack, running destructors and freeing
//! owned resources. Task failure is unrecoverable from within
//! the failing task (i.e. there is no 'try/catch' in Rust), but
//! failure may optionally be detected from a different task. If
//! the main task fails the application will exit with a non-zero
//! exit code.
//!
//! # Basic task scheduling
//!