Task Scheduler

The Task Scheduler is a simple task scheduler library for distributing the tasks over a set of threads of cores.

Features

• Task Scheduling - with a priority queue, currently a simple version based on the average delta time.
• Synchronization primitives - used either with the task scheduler or with other multithreading components in the application.

Motivation

The original purpose was to create a simple task scheduler that could be used for game engines for distributing the loads on the various individual game engine components such as frustum culling, animation and etc.

Installation

The software can be easily installed with invoking the following command.

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .
make install

Development Build

For building for development, the following commands can be used.

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build .

Integration with CMake

The idea is to be able to integrate this library with another project easily. With CMake, it basically requires 2 lines. One for adding the project and the second for adding it as a dependent linked library target.

ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(task-scheduler EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)

TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(myTarget PUBLIC taskSch)

Examples

The following a simple example for creating the scheduler object, running it and releasing the resources.

#include<taskSch.h>

int main(int argc, const char** argv){
    schTaskSch* sch;
    const size_t numPackages = 250;

    // Allocate memory for the internal structure.
    schAllocateTaskPool(&sch);

    // Create the task pool and its internal structure.
    schCreateTaskPool(sch, -1, SCH_FLAG_NO_AFM, numPackages);

    // Start running the scheduler, if failed exit
    if(schRunTaskSch(sch) != SCH_OK)
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
        
    // Release scheduler internal structures
    schReleaseTaskSch(sch);
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

The following line demonstrates how to compile it and link the program, using gcc:

gcc *.c -o task-sch-example -ltaskSch

Unit Testing

The unit testing program for asserting the behavior of the program requires a set of Dependencies, see the following.

apt-get install check libsubunit-dev

The only dependency is the pthread for Unix machines.

License

This project is licensed under the LGPL+3 License - see the LICENSE file for more details.