I am going to show a simple compilable code snipped where I get weird behaviour: after I intentionally cause a panic in processData (because I pass nil-pointer) the sending to channel l.done is blocked!
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"time"
)
type Loop struct {
done chan struct{}
}
type Result struct {
ID string
}
func NewLoop() *Loop {
return &Loop{
done: make(chan struct{}),
}
}
func (l *Loop) StartAsync(ctx context.Context) {
go func() {
defer func() {
l.done <- struct{}{} // BLOCKED! But I allocated it in NewLoop ctor
fmt.Sprintf("done")
}()
for {
/**/
var data *Result
l.processData(ctx, data) // passed nil
}
}()
}
func (l *Loop) processData(ctx context.Context, data *Result) {
_ = fmt.Sprintf("%s", data.ID) // intentional panic - OK
}
func main() {
l := NewLoop()
l.StartAsync(context.Background())
time.Sleep(10 * time.Second)
}
I can recover() a panic before sending to channel and I get correct error message.
What does happen with channel? It it was closed, I would get panic on sending to closed channel
>Solution :
It’s blocking because there isn’t anything receiving from the channel. Both the receive & the send operations on an initialized and unbuffered channel will block indefinitely if the opposite operation is missing. I.e. a send to a channel will block until another goroutine receives from that channel, and, likewise, a receive from a channel will block until another goroutine sends to that channel.
So basically
done := new(chan struct{})
done<-struct{}{}
will block forever unless there is another goroutine that receives from the channel, i.e. <-done. That’s how channels are supposed to behave. That’s how the languages specification defines their behaviour.