Starvation in MultiThreadedExecutor

[fmrico]

Bug report

Required Info:

• Operating System:
  • Ubuntu 24.04
• Installation type:
  • from source
• Version or commit hash:
  • rolling
• DDS implementation:
  • Fast-DDS
• Client library (if applicable):
  • rclcpp

Steps to reproduce issue

Use this program. The commented lines are used by me to trace the problem, using https://github.com/fmrico/yaets

#include <fstream>

// #include "yaets/tracing.hpp"

#include "rclcpp/rclcpp.hpp"
#include "std_msgs/msg/int32.hpp"

using namespace std::chrono_literals;
using std::placeholders::_1;


// yaets::TraceSession session("session1.log");

class ProducerNode : public rclcpp::Node
{
public:
  ProducerNode() : Node("producer_node")
  {
    pub_1_ = create_publisher<std_msgs::msg::Int32>("topic_1", 100);
    pub_2_ = create_publisher<std_msgs::msg::Int32>("topic_2", 100);
    timer_ = create_wall_timer(1ms, std::bind(&ProducerNode::timer_callback, this));
  }

  void timer_callback()
  {
    // TRACE_EVENT(session);
    message_.data += 1;
    pub_1_->publish(message_);
    message_.data += 1;
    pub_2_->publish(message_);
  }

private:
  rclcpp::Publisher<std_msgs::msg::Int32>::SharedPtr pub_1_, pub_2_;
  rclcpp::TimerBase::SharedPtr timer_;
  std_msgs::msg::Int32 message_;
};

class ConsumerNode : public rclcpp::Node
{
public:
  ConsumerNode() : Node("consumer_node")
  {
    sub_2_ = create_subscription<std_msgs::msg::Int32>(
      "topic_2", 100, std::bind(&ConsumerNode::cb_2, this, _1));
    sub_1_ = create_subscription<std_msgs::msg::Int32>(
      "topic_1", 100, std::bind(&ConsumerNode::cb_1, this, _1));
 
    timer_ = create_wall_timer(10ms, std::bind(&ConsumerNode::timer_callback, this));
  }

  void cb_1(const std_msgs::msg::Int32::SharedPtr msg)
  {
    // TRACE_EVENT(session);

    waste_time(500us);
  }

  void cb_2(const std_msgs::msg::Int32::SharedPtr msg)
  {
    // TRACE_EVENT(session);

    waste_time(500us);
  }

  void timer_callback()
  {
    // TRACE_EVENT(session);

    waste_time(5ms);
  }

  void waste_time(const rclcpp::Duration & duration)
  {
    auto start = now();
    while (now() - start < duration);
  }

private:
  rclcpp::Subscription<std_msgs::msg::Int32>::SharedPtr sub_1_;
  rclcpp::Subscription<std_msgs::msg::Int32>::SharedPtr sub_2_;
  rclcpp::TimerBase::SharedPtr timer_;
};

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
  rclcpp::init(argc, argv);

  auto node_pub = std::make_shared<ProducerNode>();
  auto node_sub = std::make_shared<ConsumerNode>();

  // rclcpp::executors::SingleThreadedExecutor executor;
  rclcpp::executors::MultiThreadedExecutor executor(rclcpp::ExecutorOptions(), 8);

  executor.add_node(node_pub);
  executor.add_node(node_sub);

  executor.spin();

  rclcpp::shutdown();
  return 0;
}

Expected behavior

The behavior expected is more or less what happens with SingleThreadedExecution:

Actual behavior

Callback for /topic2 (cb2) suffers starvation because most of the time timer and cb1 has event and messages to process