Substantially reduce latency for go command-line programs

Introduction

parallel coordinates and serialises output written to stdout and stderr by concurrent goroutines. The goal is to make it easy for go command-line tools to process all their arguments in parallel, thus reducing latency, while maintaining the illusion that each argument is processed serially.

parallel is designed for commands which process multiple arguments similar to:

    $ grep pattern file1 file2...
    $ sha256 filea fileb filec...
    $ gzip --verbose --best jan.tar feb.tar mar.tar...
    $ checkzone --verbose domain1 domain2 domain3...
    $ wget -O all.html https://google.com https://yahoo.com https://apple.com

Normally such commands are constrained from running a goroutine-per-argument because their output is randomly intermingled and thus rendered unintelligible. This is unfortunate as go commands are well suited to a goroutine-per-argument style of implementation.

parallel removes this constraint and enables a goroutine-per-argument approach by ensuring output is not intermingled and that all output appears in serial argument order with minimal changes to the command-line program.

For those familiar with GNU parallel, this package achieves similar functionality within commands written in go.

Project Status

parallel is known to compile and run on go versions 1.20 and beyond.

Background

A key feature of go is the ease with which programs can use goroutines to reduce latency as well as take advantage of modern multi-core CPUs. Unfortunately these advantages are rarely taken up by command-line programs since they need to present output to stdout and stderr in serial-processing order. The end-result is that most go command-line programs revert to processing arguments serially and thus incur much greater latency than they otherwise could. This is particularly true of command-line programs which reach out across the network and incur significant network delays.

parallel removes this impediment by allowing a command-line program to run a goroutine-per-argument while still presenting their output in apparent serial-processing order.

Target Audience

parallel is designed for commands which process multiple independent arguments which take a noticeable amount of time to complete; whether that be due to CPU time, network latency or other external factors. The general idea is that a command uses parallel to start a separate goroutine for each command-line argument and these goroutines run in parallel to reduce latency for the total run-time of the command. For its part, parallel coordinates the output of these goroutines such that the illusion of serial processing is maintained.

This latency reduction is particularly apparent for network-centric commands. By using parallel the total latency is bound by the slowest argument, thus O(1) as opposed to the total number of arguments which is O(n). Clearly as 'n' grows, parallel offers more latency reduction.

Idiomatic Code

Assuming your current code serially processes command-line arguments something like this:

for _, arg := range os.Args {
    handleArg(arg, os.Stdout, os.Stderr)        // Dispatch to handler
}

then to process all arguments in parallel while still generating identical output, your replacement code will look something like this:

group := parallel.NewGroup()

for _, arg := range os.Args {
    arg := arg                                      // (pre go 1.22 semantics)
    group.Add("", "",
              func(stdout, stderr io.Writer) {      // Use a Closure function
                  handleArg(arg, stdout, stderr)    // Dispatch to handler
              })
}

group.Run()
group.Wait()

Assuming handleArg is self-contained (which is to say that it does not modify global data) and consistently refers to the provided io.Writers for stdout and stderr, no other changes are required.

This example pretty much demonstrates all of the parallel functionality. IOWs, parallel is not a complicated package. Nonetheless, for those interested in more detail, complete package documentation is available at parallel.

Installation

When imported by your program, github.com/markdingo/parallel should automatically install with go mod tidy or go mod build.

If not, try running:

go get github.com/markdingo/parallel

Once installed, you can run the package tests with:

 go test -v github.com/markdingo/parallel

as well as display the package documentation with:

 go doc github.com/markdingo/parallel

Community

If you have any problems using parallel or suggestions on how it can do a better job, don't hesitate to create an issue on the project home page. This package can only improve with your feedback.

Copyright and License

parallel is Copyright ©️ 2023 Mark Delany. This software is licensed under the BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License.