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<title>Parallel Task</title>
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<h2>Parallel</h2>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>Parallel is a container task - it can contain other Ant tasks. Each nested
task within the parallel task will be executed in its own thread. </p>
<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
    <td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
    <td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">threadCount</td>
    <td valign="top">Maximum numbers of thread to use.</td>
    <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">threadsPerProcessor</td>
    <td valign="top">Maximum number of threads to use per available processor
(Requires JDK 1.4)</td>
    <td align="center" valign="top">No, defers to threadCount</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">pollInterval</td>
    <td valign="top">Maximum number of milliseconds to wait for before checking 
when waiting for available threads.</td>
    <td align="center" valign="top">No, default is 1000</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<p>Parallel tasks have a number of uses in an Ant build file including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Taking advantage of available processing resources to reduce build time</li>
<li>Testing servers, where the server can be run in one thread and the test
harness is run in another thread.</li>
</ul>

<p>Care must be taken when using multithreading to ensure the tasks within the
threads do not interact. For example, two javac compile tasks which write 
classes into the same destination directory may interact where one tries to
read a class for dependency information while the other task is writing the 
class file. Be sure to avoid these types of interactions within a 
&lt;parallel&gt; task</p>
  
<p>The parallel task has no attributes and does not support any nested 
elements apart from Ant tasks. Any valid Ant task may be embedded within a 
parallel task, including other parallel tasks.</p>

<p>Note that while the tasks within the parallel task are being run, the main 
thread will be blocked waiting for all the child threads to complete.</p>  

<p>If any of the tasks within the &lt;parallel&gt; task fails, the remaining 
tasks in other threads will continue to run until all threads have completed. 
In this situation, the parallel task will also fail.</p>

<p>The parallel task may be combined with the <a href="sequential.html">
sequential</a> task to define sequences of tasks to be executed on each thread
within the parallel block</p>

<p>The threadCount attribute can be used to place a maximum number of available
threads for the execution.  When not present all child tasks will be executed at
once.  When present then the maximum number of concurrently executing tasks will
not exceed the number of threads specified.  Furthermore, each task will be
started in the order they are given.  But no guarantee is made as to the speed 
of execution or the order of completion of the tasks, only that each will be
started before the next.<p>

<p>If you are using J2RE 1.4 or later you can also use the threadsPerProcessor
and the number of available threads will be the stated multiple of the number of
processors (there is no affinity to a particular processor however).  This will
override the value in threadCount.  If threadsPerProcessor is specified using
any version prior to 1.4 then the value in threadCount will be used as is.</p>

<p>When using threadCount and threadsPerProcessor care should be taken to insure
that the build does not deadlock.  This can be caused by tasks such as waitFor
takeing up all available threads before the tasks that would unlock the waitfor
would occur.  This is not a repalcement for Java Language level thread
semantics and is best used for "embarasingly parallel" tasks.</p>

<h3>Examples</h3>
<pre>
&lt;parallel&gt;
  &lt;wlrun ... &gt;
  &lt;sequential&gt;
    &lt;sleep seconds=&quot;30&quot;/&gt;
    &lt;junit ... &gt;
    &lt;wlstop/&gt;
  &lt;/sequential&gt;
&lt;/parallel&gt;
</pre>
<p>This example represents a typical pattern for testing a server application. 
In one thread the server is started (the wlrun task). The other thread consists 
of a three tasks which are performed in sequence. The sleep task is used to 
give the server time to come up. Another task which is capable of validating 
that the server is available could be used in place of the sleep task. The 
test harness is then run. Once the tests are complete, the server is stopped 
(using wlstop in this example), allowing both threads to complete. The 
parallel task will also complete at this time and the build will then 
continue.</p>

<pre>
&lt;parallel&gt;
  &lt;javac ...&gt; &lt;!-- compiler servlet code --&gt;
  &lt;wljspc ...&gt; &lt;!-- precompile JSPs --&gt;
&lt;/parallel&gt;
</pre>

<p>This example shows two independent tasks being run to achieve better 
resource utilization during the build. In this instance, some servlets are being
compiled in one thead and a set of JSPs is being precompiled in another. As 
noted above, you need to be careful that the two tasks are independent, both in 
terms of their dependencies and in terms of their potential interactions in
Ant's external environment.</p>

<pre>
&lt;parallel threadCount='4'&gt;
  &lt;ant target='TargetThatConsumesLotsOfCPUTimeAndMemory'&gt;
    &lt;param name='file' value='one.txt'/&gt;
  &lt;/ant&gt;
  &lt;ant target='TargetThatConsumesLotsOfCPUTimeAndMemory'&gt;
    &lt;param name='file' value='two.txt'/&gt;
  &lt;/ant&gt;
  &lt;ant target='TargetThatConsumesLotsOfCPUTimeAndMemory'&gt;
    &lt;param name='file' value='three.txt'/&gt;
  &lt;/ant&gt;
  &lt;!-- repeated about 40 times --&gt;
&lt;/parallel&gt;
</pre>

<p>This example represents a typical need for use of the threadCount and 
threadsPerProcessor attributes.  Spinning up all 40 of those tasks could cripple
the JVM for memory and the CPU for available time.  By limiting the number of
concurrent executions you can get the task done in about the same assuming
infinite memory time without needing infinite memory.  This is also a good
candidiate for use of threadCount (and possibly threadsPerProcessor) because
each task (in this hypothetical case) is independent and has no dependencies on
the other tasks.</p>

<hr>
<p align="center">Copyright &copy; 2001-2003 Apache Software Foundation. All rights
Reserved.</p>
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