Embedders may use this to specify a thread whose event loop is managed by them
instead of the engine. In addition, specifying the same task runner for both
the platform and render task runners allows embedders to effectively perform
GPU rendering operations on the platform thread.
To affect this change, the following non breaking changes to the API have been
made:
* The `FlutterCustomTaskRunners` struct now has a new field `render_task_runner`
for the specification of a custom render task runner.
* The `FlutterTaskRunnerDescription` has a new field `identifier`. Embedders
must supply a unique identifier for each task runner they specify. In
addition, when describing multiple task runners that run their tasks on the
same thread, their identifiers must match.
* The embedder may need to process tasks during `FlutterEngineRun` and
`FlutterEngineShutdown`. However, the embedder doesn't have the Flutter engine
handle before `FlutterEngineRun` and is supposed to relinquish handle right
before `FlutterEngineShutdown`. Since the embedder needs the Flutter engine
handle to service tasks on other threads while these calls are underway,
there exist opportunities for deadlock. To work around this scenario, three
new calls have been added that allow more deliberate management of the Flutter
engine instance.
* `FlutterEngineRun` can be replaced with `FlutterEngineInitialize` and
`FlutterEngineRunInitialized`. The embedder can obtain a handle to the
engine after the first call but the engine will not post any tasks to custom
task runners specified by the embedder till the
`FlutterEngineRunInitialized` call. Embedders can guard the Flutter engine
handle behind a mutex for safe task runner interop.
* `FlutterEngineShutdown` can be preceded by the `FlutterEngineDeinitialize`
call. After this call the Flutter engine will no longer post tasks onto
embedder managed task runners. It is still embedder responsibility to
collect the Flutter engine handle via `FlutterEngineShutdown`.
* To maintain backwards compatibility with the old APIs, `FlutterEngineRun` is
now just a convenience for `FlutterEngineInitialize` and
`FlutterEngineRunInitilaized`. `FlutterEngineShutdown` now implicitly calls
`FlutterEngineDeinitialize` as well. This allows existing users who don't care
are custom task runner interop to keep using the old APIs.
* Adds complete test coverage for both old and new paths.
Fixes https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/42460
Prerequisite for https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/17579
This issue would only manifest when a custom task runner was being used with
a custom compositor. Both were tested separately but not together. A new
test has been added for this. We still create the GPU thread merger
unnecessarily but I can patch that later. I also cleaned up the existing
custom task runner test to not submit tasks on a dead engine as they just
log errors unnecessarily.
Filed new: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/38844
Currently, all Flutter threads are managed by the engine itself. This works for
all threads except the platform thread. On this thread, the engine cannot see
the underlying event multiplexing mechanism. Using the new task runner
interfaces, the engine can relinquish the task of setting up the event
multiplexing mechanism and instead have the embedder provide one for it during
setup.
This scheme is only wired up for the platform thread. But, the eventual goal
is to expose this message loop interoperability for all threads.
