数据竞争和竞态条件

安全 Rust 保证没有数据竞争,数据竞争定义为

  • 两个或多个线程并发访问内存的同一位置
  • 其中一个或多个是写操作
  • 其中一个或多个是未同步的

数据竞争具有未定义行为,因此在安全 Rust 中不可能发生。数据竞争主要是通过 Rust 的所有权系统来防止的:不可能别名化可变引用,因此不可能发生数据竞争。内部可变性使情况变得更复杂,这在很大程度上是为什么我们有 Send 和 Sync trait(有关更多信息,请参见下一节)。

然而,Rust 并不能阻止一般的竞态条件。

在您不控制调度器的情况下,这在数学上是不可能的,这对于正常的操作系统环境来说是正确的。如果您控制抢占,则可能可以防止一般的竞争——RTIC 等框架使用了这种技术。然而,实际上控制调度是非常罕见的情况。

因此,Rust 被认为是“安全”的,即使它由于不正确的同步而导致死锁或做一些无意义的事情:这被称为一般的竞态条件或资源竞争。显然,这样的程序不是很好,但 Rust 当然不能阻止所有的逻辑错误。

无论如何,竞态条件本身不能在 Rust 程序中违反内存安全。只有与某些其他不安全代码结合使用,竞态条件才能真正违反内存安全。例如,一个正确的程序看起来像这样

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use std::thread;
use std::sync::atomic::{AtomicUsize, Ordering};
use std::sync::Arc;

let data = vec![1, 2, 3, 4];
// Arc so that the memory the AtomicUsize is stored in still exists for
// the other thread to increment, even if we completely finish executing
// before it. Rust won't compile the program without it, because of the
// lifetime requirements of thread::spawn!
let idx = Arc::new(AtomicUsize::new(0));
let other_idx = idx.clone();

// `move` captures other_idx by-value, moving it into this thread
thread::spawn(move || {
    // It's ok to mutate idx because this value
    // is an atomic, so it can't cause a Data Race.
    other_idx.fetch_add(10, Ordering::SeqCst);
});

// Index with the value loaded from the atomic. This is safe because we
// read the atomic memory only once, and then pass a copy of that value
// to the Vec's indexing implementation. This indexing will be correctly
// bounds checked, and there's no chance of the value getting changed
// in the middle. However our program may panic if the thread we spawned
// managed to increment before this ran. A race condition because correct
// program execution (panicking is rarely correct) depends on order of
// thread execution.
println!("{}", data[idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst)]);
}

如果我们改为提前进行边界检查,然后使用未检查的值不安全地访问数据,我们可能会导致竞态条件违反内存安全

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use std::thread;
use std::sync::atomic::{AtomicUsize, Ordering};
use std::sync::Arc;

let data = vec![1, 2, 3, 4];

let idx = Arc::new(AtomicUsize::new(0));
let other_idx = idx.clone();

// `move` captures other_idx by-value, moving it into this thread
thread::spawn(move || {
    // It's ok to mutate idx because this value
    // is an atomic, so it can't cause a Data Race.
    other_idx.fetch_add(10, Ordering::SeqCst);
});

if idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst) < data.len() {
    unsafe {
        // Incorrectly loading the idx after we did the bounds check.
        // It could have changed. This is a race condition, *and dangerous*
        // because we decided to do `get_unchecked`, which is `unsafe`.
        println!("{}", data.get_unchecked(idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst)));
    }
}
}