[ViewVC] Diff of: cvs/libev/ev.pod

Comparing libev/ev.pod (file contents):
Revision 1.100 by root, Sat Dec 22 11:49:17 2007 UTC vs.
Revision 1.105 by root, Sun Dec 23 03:50:10 2007 UTC

 =head1 SYNOPSIS
   #include <ev.h>
-=head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
+=head2 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
   #include <ev.h>
   ev_io stdin_watcher;
   ev_timer timeout_watcher;
 You register interest in certain events by registering so-called I<event
 watchers>, which are relatively small C structures you initialise with the
 details of the event, and then hand it over to libev by I<starting> the
 watcher.
-=head1 FEATURES
+=head2 FEATURES
 Libev supports C<select>, C<poll>, the Linux-specific C<epoll>, the
 BSD-specific C<kqueue> and the Solaris-specific event port mechanisms
 for file descriptor events (C<ev_io>), the Linux C<inotify> interface
 (for C<ev_stat>), relative timers (C<ev_timer>), absolute timers
 It also is quite fast (see this
 L<benchmark|http://libev.schmorp.de/bench.html> comparing it to libevent
 for example).
-=head1 CONVENTIONS
+=head2 CONVENTIONS
 Libev is very configurable. In this manual the default configuration will
 be described, which supports multiple event loops. For more info about
 various configuration options please have a look at B<EMBED> section in
 this manual. If libev was configured without support for multiple event
 loops, then all functions taking an initial argument of name C<loop>
 (which is always of type C<struct ev_loop *>) will not have this argument.
-=head1 TIME REPRESENTATION
+=head2 TIME REPRESENTATION
 Libev represents time as a single floating point number, representing the
 (fractional) number of seconds since the (POSIX) epoch (somewhere near
 the beginning of 1970, details are complicated, don't ask). This type is
 called C<ev_tstamp>, which is what you should use too. It usually aliases
 =item C<EVBACKEND_SELECT>  (value 1, portable select backend)
 This is your standard select(2) backend. Not I<completely> standard, as
 libev tries to roll its own fd_set with no limits on the number of fds,
 but if that fails, expect a fairly low limit on the number of fds when
-using this backend. It doesn't scale too well (O(highest_fd)), but its usually
+using this backend. It doesn't scale too well (O(highest_fd)), but its
-the fastest backend for a low number of fds.
+usually the fastest backend for a low number of (low-numbered :) fds.
+To get good performance out of this backend you need a high amount of
+parallelity (most of the file descriptors should be busy). If you are
+writing a server, you should C<accept ()> in a loop to accept as many
+connections as possible during one iteration. You might also want to have
+a look at C<ev_set_io_collect_interval ()> to increase the amount of
+readyness notifications you get per iteration.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_POLL>    (value 2, poll backend, available everywhere except on windows)
-And this is your standard poll(2) backend. It's more complicated than
+And this is your standard poll(2) backend. It's more complicated
-select, but handles sparse fds better and has no artificial limit on the
+than select, but handles sparse fds better and has no artificial
-number of fds you can use (except it will slow down considerably with a
+limit on the number of fds you can use (except it will slow down
-lot of inactive fds). It scales similarly to select, i.e. O(total_fds).
+considerably with a lot of inactive fds). It scales similarly to select,
+i.e. O(total_fds). See the entry for C<EVBACKEND_SELECT>, above, for
+performance tips.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_EPOLL>   (value 4, Linux)
 For few fds, this backend is a bit little slower than poll and select,
 but it scales phenomenally better. While poll and select usually scale
 like O(total_fds) where n is the total number of fds (or the highest fd),
 epoll scales either O(1) or O(active_fds). The epoll design has a number
 of shortcomings, such as silently dropping events in some hard-to-detect
 cases and rewiring a syscall per fd change, no fork support and bad
-support for dup:
+support for dup.
 While stopping, setting and starting an I/O watcher in the same iteration
 will result in some caching, there is still a syscall per such incident
 (because the fd could point to a different file description now), so its
 best to avoid that. Also, C<dup ()>'ed file descriptors might not work
 very well if you register events for both fds.
 Please note that epoll sometimes generates spurious notifications, so you
 need to use non-blocking I/O or other means to avoid blocking when no data
 (or space) is available.
+Best performance from this backend is achieved by not unregistering all
+watchers for a file descriptor until it has been closed, if possible, i.e.
+keep at least one watcher active per fd at all times.
+While nominally embeddeble in other event loops, this feature is broken in
+all kernel versions tested so far.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_KQUEUE>  (value 8, most BSD clones)
 Kqueue deserves special mention, as at the time of this writing, it
 was broken on all BSDs except NetBSD (usually it doesn't work reliably
 course). While stopping, setting and starting an I/O watcher does never
 cause an extra syscall as with C<EVBACKEND_EPOLL>, it still adds up to
 two event changes per incident, support for C<fork ()> is very bad and it
 drops fds silently in similarly hard-to-detect cases.
+This backend usually performs well under most conditions.
+While nominally embeddable in other event loops, this doesn't work
+everywhere, so you might need to test for this. And since it is broken
+almost everywhere, you should only use it when you have a lot of sockets
+(for which it usually works), by embedding it into another event loop
+(e.g. C<EVBACKEND_SELECT> or C<EVBACKEND_POLL>) and using it only for
+sockets.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_DEVPOLL> (value 16, Solaris 8)
-This is not implemented yet (and might never be).
+This is not implemented yet (and might never be, unless you send me an
+implementation). According to reports, C</dev/poll> only supports sockets
+and is not embeddable, which would limit the usefulness of this backend
+immensely.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_PORT>    (value 32, Solaris 10)
 This uses the Solaris 10 event port mechanism. As with everything on Solaris,
 it's really slow, but it still scales very well (O(active_fds)).
 Please note that solaris event ports can deliver a lot of spurious
 notifications, so you need to use non-blocking I/O or other means to avoid
 blocking when no data (or space) is available.
+While this backend scales well, it requires one system call per active
+file descriptor per loop iteration. For small and medium numbers of file
+descriptors a "slow" C<EVBACKEND_SELECT> or C<EVBACKEND_POLL> backend
+might perform better.
 =item C<EVBACKEND_ALL>
 Try all backends (even potentially broken ones that wouldn't be tried
 with C<EVFLAG_AUTO>). Since this is a mask, you can do stuff such as
 C<EVBACKEND_ALL & ~EVBACKEND_KQUEUE>.
+It is definitely not recommended to use this flag.
 =back
 If one or more of these are ored into the flags value, then only these
 backends will be tried (in the reverse order as given here). If none are
 overhead for the actual polling but can deliver many events at once.
 By setting a higher I<io collect interval> you allow libev to spend more
 time collecting I/O events, so you can handle more events per iteration,
 at the cost of increasing latency. Timeouts (both C<ev_periodic> and
-C<ev_timer>) will be not affected. Setting this to a non-null bvalue will
+C<ev_timer>) will be not affected. Setting this to a non-null value will
 introduce an additional C<ev_sleep ()> call into most loop iterations.
 Likewise, by setting a higher I<timeout collect interval> you allow libev
 to spend more time collecting timeouts, at the expense of increased
 latency (the watcher callback will be called later). C<ev_io> watchers
 optimisations to libev.
 =head3 The special problem of dup'ed file descriptors
 Some backends (e.g. epoll), cannot register events for file descriptors,
-but only events for the underlying file descriptions. That menas when you
+but only events for the underlying file descriptions. That means when you
 have C<dup ()>'ed file descriptors and register events for them, only one
 file descriptor might actually receive events.
-There is no workaorund possible except not registering events
+There is no workaround possible except not registering events
-for potentially C<dup ()>'ed file descriptors or to resort to
+for potentially C<dup ()>'ed file descriptors, or to resort to
 C<EVBACKEND_SELECT> or C<EVBACKEND_POLL>.
 =head3 The special problem of fork
 Some backends (epoll, kqueue) do not support C<fork ()> at all or exhibit
 than enough. If you need to manage thousands of children you might want to
 increase this value (I<must> be a power of two).
 =item EV_INOTIFY_HASHSIZE
-C<ev_staz> watchers use a small hash table to distribute workload by
+C<ev_stat> watchers use a small hash table to distribute workload by
 inotify watch id. The default size is C<16> (or C<1> with C<EV_MINIMAL>),
 usually more than enough. If you need to manage thousands of C<ev_stat>
 watchers you might want to increase this value (I<must> be a power of
 two).

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Comparing libev/ev.pod (file contents): Revision 1.100 by root, Sat Dec 22 11:49:17 2007 UTC vs. Revision 1.105 by root, Sun Dec 23 03:50:10 2007 UTC

Diff Legend

Comparing libev/ev.pod (file contents):
Revision 1.100 by root, Sat Dec 22 11:49:17 2007 UTC vs.
Revision 1.105 by root, Sun Dec 23 03:50:10 2007 UTC