libtlb

A library for safely balancing event loop handlers across threads.

Design

TLB is designed around a single event loop that is blocked on by multiple threads. Thread safety is achieved by setting up all subscriptions in oneshot mode (EPOLLONESHOT on epoll, EV_DISPATCH on kqueue), and automatically resubscribing the fd once the user's callback is complete. This means that while one thread is processing an fd, new events will not trigger other threads to wake, and thus only one thread may be processing an fd at a time.

Grouped FDs may be setup by subscribing them to a tlb_evl instance, and then adding that to the TLB's main loop. In this case, events inside this "sub loop" will only be processed by a single thread at any given time.

API

TLB

tlb_new

Creates a new TLB instance.

tlb_destroy

Stops a TLB and throws it into the garbage.

tlb_start

Spin up the requested number of threads and starts them on waiting on the super loop.

tlb_stop

Stop processing events and spin down all of the threads.

tlb_get_evl

Get the super loop for the TLB. Use this loop to subscribe things that you would like to receive events for.

Terminology

Term	Definition
TLB	The library's primary API. Don't ask what TLB stands for.
EVL	Event loop (wrapper around epoll or kqueue).
TLB	Main Loop: The event loop that the threads block on.
Sub Loop	An event loop that is not blocked on directly, but rather is subscribed to another event loop.
Super Loop	An event loop that has other event loops subscribed to it.