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asynchronousf#taskcancellationmailboxprocessor

Canceled Task does not return control to async block


I tried to reduce this to the smallest possible repro, but it's still a bit long-ish, my apologies.

I have an F# project that references a C# project with code like the following.

public static class CSharpClass {
    public static async Task AsyncMethod(CancellationToken cancellationToken) {
        await Task.Delay(3000);
        cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
    }
}

Here's the F# code.

type Message = 
    | Work of CancellationToken
    | Quit of AsyncReplyChannel<unit>

let mkAgent() = MailboxProcessor.Start <| fun inbox -> 
    let rec loop() = async {
        let! msg = inbox.TryReceive(250)
        match msg with
        | Some (Work cancellationToken) ->
            let! result = 
                CSharpClass.AsyncMethod(cancellationToken)
                |> Async.AwaitTask
                |> Async.Catch
            // THIS POINT IS NEVER REACHED AFTER CANCELLATION
            match result with
            | Choice1Of2 _ -> printfn "Success"
            | Choice2Of2 exn -> printfn "Error: %A" exn    
            return! loop()
        | Some (Quit replyChannel) -> replyChannel.Reply()
        | None -> return! loop()
    }
    loop()

[<EntryPoint>]
let main argv = 
    let agent = mkAgent()
    use cts = new CancellationTokenSource()
    agent.Post(Work cts.Token)
    printfn "Press any to cancel."
    System.Console.Read() |> ignore
    cts.Cancel()
    printfn "Cancelled."
    agent.PostAndReply Quit
    printfn "Done."
    System.Console.Read()

The issue is that, upon cancellation, control never returns to the async block. I'm not sure if it's hanging in AwaitTask or Catch. Intuition tells me it's blocking when trying to return to the previous sync context, but I'm not sure how to confirm this. I'm looking for ideas on how to troubleshoot this, or perhaps someone with a deeper understanding here can spot the issue.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

let! result = 
    Async.FromContinuations(fun (cont, econt, _) ->
        let ccont e = econt e
        let work = CSharpClass.AsyncMethod(cancellationToken) |> Async.AwaitTask
        Async.StartWithContinuations(work, cont, econt, ccont))
    |> Async.Catch

Solution

  • What ultimately causes this behavior is that cancellations are special in F# Async. Cancellations effectively translate to a stop and teardown. As you can see in the source, cancellation in the Task makes it all the way out of the computation.

    If you want the good old OperationCanceledException which you can handle as part of your computation, we can just make our own.

    type Async =
        static member AwaitTaskWithCancellations (task: Task<_>) =
            Async.FromContinuations(fun (setResult, setException, setCancelation) ->
                task.ContinueWith(fun (t:Task<_>) -> 
                    match t.Status with 
                    | TaskStatus.RanToCompletion -> setResult t.Result
                    | TaskStatus.Faulted -> setException t.Exception
                    | TaskStatus.Canceled -> setException <| OperationCanceledException()
                    | _ -> ()
                ) |> ignore
            )
    

    Cancellation is now just another exception - and exceptions, we can handle. Here's the repro:

    let tcs = TaskCompletionSource<unit>()
    tcs.SetCanceled()
    
    async { 
        try        
            let! result = tcs.Task |> Async.AwaitTaskWithCancellations
            return result
        with
             | :? OperationCanceledException -> 
               printfn "cancelled"      
             | ex -> printfn "faulted %A" ex
    
        ()
    } |> Async.RunSynchronously