Python: How can I check the number of pending task

Question

I have a small pool of workers (4) and a very large list of tasks (5000~). I'm using a pool and sending the tasks with map_async(). Because the task I'm running is fairly long, I'm forcing a chunksize of 1 so that one long process can't hold up some shorter ones.

What I'd like to do is periodically check how many tasks are left to be submitted. I know at most 4 will be active, I'm concerned with how many are left to process.

I've googled around and I can't find anybody doing this.

Some simple code to help:

import multiprocessing
import time

def mytask(num):
    print('Started task, sleeping %s' % num)
    time.sleep(num)

pool = multiprocessing.Pool(4)
jobs = pool.map_async(mytask, [1,2,3,4,5,3,2,3,4,5,2,3,2,3,4,5,6,4], chunksize=1)
pool.close()

while True:
    if not jobs.ready():
        print("We're not done yet, %s tasks to go!" % <somethingtogettasks>)
        jobs.wait(2)
    else:
        break

Answer 1

No airtight way that I know of, but if you use the Pool.imap_unordered() function instead of map_async, you can intercept the elements that are processed.

import multiprocessing
import time

process_count = 4

def mytask(num):
    print('Started task, sleeping %s' % num)
    time.sleep(num)
    # Actually, you should return the job you've created here.
    return num

pool = multiprocess.Pool(process_count)
jobs  = []
items = [1,2,3,4,5,3,2,3,4,5,2,3,2,3,4,5,6,4]
job_count = 0
for job in pool.imap_unordered(mytask, items):
    jobs.append(job)
    job_count += 1

    incomplete = len(items) - job_count
    unsubmitted = max(0, incomplete - process_count)

    print "Jobs incomplete: %s. Unsubmitted: %s" % incomplete, unsubmitted

pool.close()

I'm subtracting process_count, because you can pretty much assume that all processes will be processing with one of two exceptions: 1) if you use an iterator, there may not be further items left to consume and process, and 2) You may have fewer than 4 items left. I didn't code in for the first exception. But it should be pretty easy to do so if you need to. Anyway, your example uses a list so you shouldn't have that problem.

Edit: I also realized you're using a While loop, which makes it look like you're trying to update something periodically, say, every half second or something. The code I gave as an example will not do it that way. I'm not sure if that's a problem.

Answer 2

I have similar requirements: track progress, perform interim work based on the results, stop all processing cleanly at any arbitrary time. How I've dealt with it is to send tasks one at a time with apply_async. A heavily simplified version of what I do:

maxProcesses = 4
q = multiprocessing.Queue()
pool = multiprocessing.Pool()
runlist = range(100000)
sendcounter = 0
donecounter = 0
while donecounter < len(runlist):
    if stopNowBooleanFunc():  # if for whatever reason I want to stop processing early
        if donecounter == sendcounter:  # wait til already sent tasks finish running
            break
    else:  # don't send new tasks if it's time to stop
        while sendcounter < len(runlist) and sendcounter - donecounter < maxProcesses:
            pool.apply_async(mytask, (runlist[sendcounter], q))
            sendcounter += 1

    while not q.empty():  # process completed results as they arrive
        aresult = q.get()
        processResults(aresult)
        donecounter += 1

Note that I use a Queue instead of returning the results.

Answer 3

You can check the number of pending jobs by seeing Pool._cache attribute assuming that you are using apply_async. This is where ApplyResult is stored until they are available and equals to the number of ApplyResults pending.

import multiprocessing as mp
import random
import time


def job():
    time.sleep(random.randint(1,10))
    print("job finished")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pool = mp.Pool(5)
    for _ in range(10):
        pool.apply_async(job)

    while pool._cache:
        print("number of jobs pending: ", len(pool._cache))
        time.sleep(2)

    pool.close()
    pool.join()

Answer 4

Looks like jobs._number_left is what you want. _ indicates that it is an internal value which may change at the whim of the developers, but it seems to be the only way to get that info.