Skip to content

Add reference about micro/macrotask queues #15

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Sep 7, 2021
Merged
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ js.timers.setTimeout(100.millis) {
loop()
```

The `loop()` future will run forever when using the default Scala.js executor, which is written in terms of JavaScript's `Promise`. The *reason* this will run forever stems from the fact that JavaScript includes two separate work queues: the microtask and the macrotask queue. The microtask queue is used exclusively by `Promise`, while the macrotask queue is used by everything else, including UI rendering, `setTimeout`, and I/O such as XHR or Node.js things. The semantics are such that, whenever the microtask queue has work, it takes full precedence over the macrotask queue until the microtask queue is completely exhausted.
The `loop()` future will run forever when using the default Scala.js executor, which is written in terms of JavaScript's `Promise`. The *reason* this will run forever stems from the fact that JavaScript includes two separate work queues: the [microtask and the macrotask queue](https://javascript.info/event-loop). The microtask queue is used exclusively by `Promise`, while the macrotask queue is used by everything else, including UI rendering, `setTimeout`, and I/O such as XHR or Node.js things. The semantics are such that, whenever the microtask queue has work, it takes full precedence over the macrotask queue until the microtask queue is completely exhausted.

This explains why the above snippet will run forever on a `Promise`-based executor: the microtask queue is *never* empty because we're constantly adding new tasks! Thus, `setTimeout` is never able to run because the macrotask queue never receives control.

Expand Down