The Future trait

The local Rc problem

Let's go back to tokio::spawn's signature:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
pub fn spawn<F>(future: F) -> JoinHandle<F::Output>
    where
        F: Future + Send + 'static,
        F::Output: Send + 'static,
{ /* */ }
}

What does it actually mean for F to be Send?
It implies, as we saw in the previous section, that whatever value it captures from the spawning environment has to be Send. But it goes further than that.

Any value that's held across a .await point has to be Send.
Let's look at an example:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use std::rc::Rc;
use tokio::task::yield_now;

fn spawner() {
    tokio::spawn(example());
}

async fn example() {
    // A value that's not `Send`,
    // created _inside_ the async function
    let non_send = Rc::new(1);
    
    // A `.await` point that does nothing
    yield_now().await;

    // The local non-`Send` value is still needed
    // after the `.await`
    println!("{}", non_send);
}
}

The compiler will reject this code:

error: future cannot be sent between threads safely
    |
5   |     tokio::spawn(example());
    |                  ^^^^^^^^^ 
    | future returned by `example` is not `Send`
    |
note: future is not `Send` as this value is used across an await
    |
11  |     let non_send = Rc::new(1);
    |         -------- has type `Rc<i32>` which is not `Send`
12  |     // A `.await` point
13  |     yield_now().await;
    |                 ^^^^^ 
    |   await occurs here, with `non_send` maybe used later
note: required by a bound in `tokio::spawn`
    |
164 |     pub fn spawn<F>(future: F) -> JoinHandle<F::Output>
    |            ----- required by a bound in this function
165 |     where
166 |         F: Future + Send + 'static,
    |                     ^^^^ required by this bound in `spawn`

To understand why that's the case, we need to refine our understanding of Rust's asynchronous model.

The Future trait

We stated early on that async functions return futures, types that implement the Future trait. You can think of a future as a state machine. It's in one of two states:

• pending: the computation has not finished yet.
• ready: the computation has finished, here's the output.

This is encoded in the trait definition:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
trait Future {
    type Output;
    
    // Ignore `Pin` and `Context` for now
    fn poll(
      self: Pin<&mut Self>, 
      cx: &mut Context<'_>
    ) -> Poll<Self::Output>;
}
}

poll

The poll method is the heart of the Future trait.
A future on its own doesn't do anything. It needs to be polled to make progress.
When you call poll, you're asking the future to do some work. poll tries to make progress, and then returns one of the following:

• Poll::Pending: the future is not ready yet. You need to call poll again later.
• Poll::Ready(value): the future has finished. value is the result of the computation, of type Self::Output.

Once Future::poll returns Poll::Ready, it should not be polled again: the future has completed, there's nothing left to do.

The role of the runtime

You'll rarely, if ever, be calling poll directly.
That's the job of your async runtime: it has all the required information (the Context in poll's signature) to ensure that your futures are making progress whenever they can.

async fn and futures

We've worked with the high-level interface, asynchronous functions.
We've now looked at the low-level primitive, the Future trait.

How are they related?

Every time you mark a function as asynchronous, that function will return a future. The compiler will transform the body of your asynchronous function into a state machine: one state for each .await point.

Going back to our Rc example:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use std::rc::Rc;
use tokio::task::yield_now;

async fn example() {
    let non_send = Rc::new(1);
    yield_now().await;
    println!("{}", non_send);
}
}

The compiler would transform it into an enum that looks somewhat like this:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
pub enum ExampleFuture {
    NotStarted,
    YieldNow(Rc<i32>),
    Terminated,
}
}

When example is called, it returns ExampleFuture::NotStarted. The future has never been polled yet, so nothing has happened.
When the runtime polls it the first time, ExampleFuture will advance until the next .await point: it'll stop at the ExampleFuture::YieldNow(Rc<i32>) stage of the state machine, returning Poll::Pending.
When it's polled again, it'll execute the remaining code (println!) and return Poll::Ready(()).

When you look at its state machine representation, ExampleFuture, it is now clear why example is not Send: it holds an Rc, therefore it cannot be Send.

Yield points

As you've just seen with example, every .await point creates a new intermediate state in the lifecycle of a future.
That's why .await points are also known as yield points: your future yields control back to the runtime that was polling it, allowing the runtime to pause it and (if necessary) schedule another task for execution, thus making progress on multiple fronts concurrently.

We'll come back to the importance of yielding in a later section.

Exercise

The exercise for this section is located in 08_futures/04_future