How deeply does Go in Practice, Second Edition cover goroutine leak?

Explains leak causes and shutdown coordination, including unsafe closure and sender-controlled cleanup.

Goroutine leak

As explained in Go in Practice, Second Edition

A goroutine leak is a failure of a goroutine to terminate after it is no longer needed, causing it to consume system resources.

A goroutine leak occurs when a goroutine remains active after it is no longer needed, consuming resources without doing useful work. Repeatedly creating a goroutine and channel without returning or closing them can make a long-running application leaky. section 5.3.2

Prevent leaks by coordinating shutdown:

Make the goroutine return when its work ends. section 5.3.2
Close a channel only when it is safe; closing it while another goroutine sends causes a panic. section 5.3.2
Use a separate notification channel to tell the sending goroutine to close its channel and exit. section 5.3.2

Coordinated shutdown

A sender can select on a done channel alongside its normal work. When the receiver signals done, the sender closes the message channel and returns instead of remaining blocked or sending after closure.

How Go in Practice, Second Edition covers it

liveBook manning.com

Read Go in Practice, Second Edition on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Related concepts

context packageaddressed by · The context package is Go’s standard-library package for propagating cancellation, deadlines, timeouts, and request-scoped values across call boundaries.
contextaddressed by · In Go, context.Context is an interface carrying cancellation signals, deadlines, and request-scoped values across function and service boundaries.
closeaddressed by · Close is an operation that terminates access to an associated resource or interface and releases or finalizes related resources or pending work.
done channel patternaddressed by · The done channel pattern uses a channel to signal cancellation or completion so concurrent operations can stop and perform cleanup.
select statementaddressed by · A select statement is a language construct that retrieves selected data or chooses among alternative operations or cases according to the language's rules.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Go in Practice, Second Edition. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.