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Background process blocking operations

zed-industries/zed
Based on 4 comments
Rust

Always move potentially blocking operations to background threads to maintain UI responsiveness. Use appropriate spawning mechanisms based on the operation type:

Concurrency Rust

Reviewer Prompt

Always move potentially blocking operations to background threads to maintain UI responsiveness. Use appropriate spawning mechanisms based on the operation type:

  1. For CPU-intensive work or file operations: ```rust // Don’t do this - blocks main thread let result = heavy_computation();

// Do this instead cx.background_spawn(async move { let result = heavy_computation(); // Update state after computation }).await;


2. For state updates after background work:
```rust
// Accumulate new state first
let new_state = cx.background_spawn(async move {
    let mut new_data = Vec::new();
    // ... heavy computation ...
    new_data
}).await;

// Then update actual state once
self.state = new_state;

Key principles:

  • Use cx.background_spawn() for CPU-intensive operations
  • Keep main thread operations light and UI-focused
  • Accumulate state changes in background before applying
  • Consider using rate limits for multiple concurrent operations

This pattern is essential for maintaining application responsiveness and preventing UI freezes.

4
Comments Analyzed
Rust
Primary Language
Concurrency
Category

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