Closing the foreground thread gracefully at stopping the Windows service

Question

In my Windows service, I create one “parent” foreground thread, which in turn spawns “child” threads using ThreadPool (which means they are the background) to complete the tasks.

What is the best way to close foreground threads gracefully at stopping windows service?

Here is my current implementation (devoid of logic for a specific task):

public partial class TaskScheduler : ServiceBase
{
   private static AutoResetEvent _finishedTaskAutoResetEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false);

   //This flag is used to increase chances of the Spawning Thread to finish gracefully when service stops.
   private bool StopRequested { get; set; }

   private int _executingTasksCount;

   private int ExecutingTasksCount { get { return _executingTasksCount; } }

   private void IncCurrentTasksCount()
   {
       Interlocked.Increment(ref _executingTasksCount);
   }

   private void DecCurrentTasksCount()
   {
       Interlocked.Decrement(ref _executingTasksCount);
   }

   public TaskScheduler()
   {
       InitializeComponent();

       Thread spawningThread = new Thread(DoSpawnTaskExecutionThreads);

       spawningThread.Name = "Spawning Thread";
       spawningThread.IsBackground = false;
       spawningThread.Start();
   }

   protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
   {
   }

   protected override void OnStop()
   {
       StopRequested = true;
   }

   private void DoSpawnTaskExecutionThreads()
   {
       //We check StopRequested to try and finish this thread gracefully when service stops.
       while (!StopRequested)
       {
           while (!StopRequested && ExecutingTasksCount < MaxPooledTasks)
           {
               ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(ExecuteTask, new Task());

               IncCurrentTasksCount();
           }

           _finishedTaskAutoResetEvent.WaitOne();
       }

       //Either all task execution threads will finish or the process will be terminated forcibly.
       while (ExecutingTasksCount > 0)
       {
           Thread.Sleep(200); //Check five times a second.
       }

       _eventLog.WriteEntry("The Spawning Thread finished along with task execution threads.");
   }

   private void ExecuteTask(object state)
   {
       try
       {
           Task task = (Task)state;

           task.Execute();
       }
       catch
       {
           // Handle exception.
       }
       finally
       {
           DecCurrentTasksCount();
           _finishedTaskAutoResetEvent.Set();
       }
   }

}

Answer 1

I see a couple of problems with the code.

• Validation is StopRequestednot thread safe.
• Validation is ExecutingTaskCountnot thread safe.
• _finishedTaskAutoResetEvent AutoResetEvent, , WaitHandle . , , , while.

. CountdownEvent, .NET 4.0.

public class TaskScheduler : ServiceBase
{
    private m_Stop as ManualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(false);

    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)           
    {           
      var thread = new Thread(DoSpawnTaskExecutionThreads);
      thread.Name = "Spawning Thread";
      thread.IsBackground = false;
      thread.Start();
    }           

    protected override OnStop()
    {
      m_Stop.Set();
    }

    public DoSpawnTaskExecutionThreads()
    {
      // The semaphore will control how many concurrent tasks can run.
      var pool = new Semaphore(MaxPooledThreads, MaxPooledThreads);

      // The countdown event will be used to wait for any pending tasks.
      // Initialize the count to 1 so that we treat this thread as if it 
      // were a work item. This is necessary to avoid a subtle race
      // with a real work item that completes quickly.
      var tasks = new CountdownEvent(1);

      // This array will be used to control the spinning of the loop.
      var all = new WaitHandle[] { pool, m_Stop };

      while (WaitHandle.WaitAny(all) == 0)
      {
        // Indicate that there is another task.
        tasks.AddCount();

        // Queue the task.
        Thread.QueueUserWorkItem(
          (state) =>
          {
            try
            {
              var task = (Task)state;
              task.Execute();
            }
            finally
            {
              pool.Release(); // Allow another task to be queued.
              tasks.Signal(); // Indicate that this task is complete.
            }
          }, new Task());
      }

      // Indicate that the main thread is complete.
      tasks.Signal();

      // Wait for all pending tasks.
      tasks.Wait();
    }
}

Answer 2

, :

StopRequested . , volatile.

private volatile bool stopRequested;
private bool StopRequested
{
    get { return this.stopRequested; }
    set { this.stopRequested = value; }
}

, ( ) , .

, .NET 4 , , CancellationToken BlockingCollection<T>.

Answer 3

You can use the Join method to gracefully kill a thread. MSDN contains some information about the method.