When do Core­Dispatcher.Run­Async and Thread­Pool.Run­Async actions complete?

The Core­Dispatcher::Run­Async and Thread­Pool::Run­Async methods take a delegate and schedule it to be invoked on the dispatcher thread or on a thread pool thread. These methods return an IAsync­Action, but when does that action complete?

When dealing with asynchronous methods, there are two ways of talking about the result.

First, there’s the return value of the asynchronous method, which at the ABI level is an IAsync­Action or IAsync­Operation. Depending on the language projection, this is exposed to the programmer as a language-specific object.

Projection	IAsync­Action	IAsync­Operation<T>	Notes
C++/WinRT	IAsync­Action	IAsync­Operation<T>
C++/CX	IAsync­Action^ task<void>	IAsync­Operation<T>^ task<T>	Projected as IAsyncXxx usually wrapped into task/Task.
C#	IAsync­Action Task	IAsync­Operation<T> Task<T>
JavaScript	Promise	Promise

The second result is the thing that you receive when the asynchronous operation completes.

Projection	IAsync­Action	IAsync­Operation<T>
C++/WinRT	void	T
C++/CX	void	T
C++/CX + PPL	void	T
C#	void	T
JavaScript	undefined	T

And there’s also a third thing to worry about, which is when you receive that completion result.

Let’s answer the three questions for the Core­Dispatcher::Run­Async and Thread­Pool::Run­Async methods.

First, they return an IAsync­Action. The methods schedule the delegate to be invoked later, and then return an IAsync­Action representing the pending operation.

Second, they complete with void. There is no additional information reported when the operation completes.

Third (and most interesting) is that they complete when the delegate returns.

Not when the delegate completes.

This means that when you pass a delegate that itself represents an asynchronous operation, the IAsync­Action returned by Run­Async completes once your delegate returns its own async operation. The dispatcher or thread pool doesn’t even see that async operation; it’s eaten by your language projection. All that the dispatcher or thread pool knows is that it invoked the delegate, and the delegate returned void, so we must be done.

The C++/WinRT, and JavaScript projections permit your delegate to return someting, even though the formal function signature returns void. The projection just throws your return value away, and the caller gets nothing. The C# language lets you make a function formally return void, even though it secretly continues running asynchronously. The syntax for this is async void, and I’ve discussed the perils of async void in the past.

This means that if you await the result of a Run­Async, the await will complete when your delegate either returns or performs its own await operation, whichever comes first.

// C++/WinRT

co_await Dispatcher().RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority::Normal,
    [lifetime = get_strong()]() -> fire_and_forget
    {
        co_await SomethingAsync();
        co_await SomethingElseAsync();
        Finished();
    });

// C++/CX

create_task(Dispatcher->RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority::Normal,
    ref new DispatchedHandler([this]()
    {
        create_task(SomethingAsync()).then([this]() {
            return create_task(SomethingElseAsync());
        }).then([this]() {
            Finished();
        });
    }))).then([this]()
    {
        BackOnMainThread();
    });


// C++/CX + co_await

co_await Dispatcher->RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority::Normal,
    ref new DispatchedHandler([this]()
    {
        []() -> task<void>
        {
            co_await SomethingAsync();
            co_await SomethingElseAsync();
            Finished();
        }();
    }));
BackOnMainThread();

// C#

await Dispatcher.RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority::Normal, async () =>
    {
        await SomethingAsync();
        await SomethingElseAsync();
        Finished();
    });
BackOnMainThread();

// JavaScript (pretend)¹

await dispatcher.runAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority.normal, async () =>
    {
        await somethingAsync();
        await somethingElseAsync();
        finished();
    });
backOnMainThread();

When does the await/co_await complete and the Back­On­Main­Thread run?

Answer: When Something­Async returns its IAsync­Action, that action gets wrapped inside a coroutine, and execution suspends, returning control to the dispatcher or thread pool. At this point, the delegate has returned, and the Run­Async declares its action to have completed. The object representing the coroutine (the IAsyncAction, task, Task, or Promise) is simply discarded.

In C++/WinRT and JavaScript, the discarding is done by the projection. In C++/CX, the discarding is explicit in the code: Observe that we create a task but do not return it. In C#, the discarding is done by the language itself because an async lambda can be implicitly converted to a non-async void lambda (by treating it as if were async void).

Another way of looking at this analysis is that the lambda returns when it encounters its first await/co_await or return. This in turn causes the Run­Async to complete its own IAsync­Action.

If we write things out explicitly, the sequence of operations might be more clear:

// C#
async () =>
{
    await SomethingAsync();
    await SomethingElseAsync();
    Finished();
}

This gets transformed by the compiler into

class Lambda
{
    async void Invoke()
    {
        await SomethingAsync();
        await SomethingElseAsync();
        Finished();
    }
}

which gets further transformed into

class Lambda
{
    void Invoke()
    {
        Task task1 = SomethingAsync();
        task1.ContinueWith(_ => {
            Task task2 = SomethingElseAsync();
            task2.ContinueWith(_ => {
                Finished();
            });
        });
    }
}

Once Something­Async returns its Task, the lambda attaches a continuation to it, so that it can resume execution when the task completes. At that point, the outer lambda has finished its work, and the Invoke method returns. This returns control back to the delegate or thread pool, which declares that the Run­Async has completed. And the completion of Run­Async means that Back­On­Main­Thread starts to run.

This behavior is usually not what you want. You want to wait until the lambda has completed, not just returned. We’ll look at one possible solution next time.

¹ JavaScript is a single-threaded language, so you can’t actually do this, but I included it for completeness to demonstrate what would happen if it were possible.