What's the point of std::launch::deferred? - c++11

The whole point of std::async is to run your tasks asynchronously whenever possible. I would guess it's ok to not specify the launch policy and let the implementation decide (for example if there are too many threads in flight), but what's the use of setting the policy to deferred explicitly when launching std::async?

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Is there a way to update the number of concurrency in ConcurrentMessageListenerContainer?

I developing an application which using the spring-kafka package and changing the amount of data it handled in run time.
I want to let the system the ability to change in run time the number of concurrency depend on the pressure the system feel (something that I will defined).
Right now the my solution is to doStop and doStart the ConcurrentMessageListenerContainer explicitly but I look for a clean way which not damage the stream and not touch an internal methods of the ConcurrentMessageListenerContainer explicitly
You don't need to interact with these internal methods; use stop() and start(), which are public, instead.
You cannot change the concurrency dynamically, only by stopping and starting the container, changing the concurrency while stopped.

Workflow Waiting Forever

I have a workflow that runs when an entity is created and it creates two other entities and puts them on a queue. It then waits until each entity's status reason is set to done. After which is continues.
Basically two teams will work an order and then it will continue processing after both teams are done.
Most of the time it works. However sometimes it waits forever. I'll re-active and re-resolve the other tasks, but it just never wakes up.
What can I do? The workflows aren't really powerful enough for me to have it poll with a timeout (there are no loops). I'd like to avoid on-change plugins for these other entities to get workflow behavior all scattered about.
Edit:
Restarting the CRM services (not sure which did it, I restarted them all) allowed the workflow to resume. However, I'd still like to know how to make this more reliable.
I had the same problem (and a lot more) with workflows in CRM 2011 and decided not to use them (except for very special purposes).
The main reason is because of their very limited error handling. Another reason is that it is inconvenient to put them under source control. Another reasons are: Worflows cannot run offline and user impersonation is also not supported. For a comparison look here: http://goo.gl/9ht1QJ
Use plugins instead of workflows, then you have full control.
But keep in mind that plugins (unlike workflows) are not designed for long running tasks.
So they have a default max execution time of 120 sec and are not stateful/persisted. But in most cases (and i think also in your case) that is not a problem.
Just change your eventing a little bit:
Implement and register a plugin step for: entity is created and it creates two other entities and puts them on a queue
Implement and register another step: entity's status reason is set to done, query for other entity and check status, if done continue processing
If you really do not want use plugins for you business logic you can consider implementing a plugin which restarts/resumes faulted workflows.
But thats not a very nice solution.

Start and monitor multiple instances of one process in Windows

I have a Windows application of which I need multiple instances running, with different command line parameters. The application is quite unstable and tends to crash every 48 hours or so.
Since manual checking for failure and restarting in case of one isn't what I love to do I want to write a "manager program" for this. It would launch the program (all its instances) and then watch them. In case a process crashes it would be restarted.
In Linux I could achieve this with fork()s and pids, but this obviously is not available in Windows. So, should I try to implement a CreateProcess version or is there a better way?
When you call CreateProcess, you are returned a handle to the new process in the hProcess member of the process information struct that you pass to CreateProcess. You can use this handle to detect when the process terminates.
For instance, you can create another thread and call WaitForSingleObject(hProcess) and block until the process terminates. Then you can decide whether or not to restart it.
Or your could call GetExitCodeProcess(hProcess, &exitcode) and test exitcode. If it has the value STILL_ACTIVE then your process has not terminated. This approach based on GetExitCodeProcess necessitates polling.
If it can be run as a daemon, the simplest way to ensure it keep running is Non-Sucking Service Manager.
It will allow to run as win32 service applications not designed as services. It will monitor and restart if necessary. And the source code is included, if any customization is needed.
All you need to do is define each of your instances as a service, with the required parameters, at it will do the rest.
If you have some kind of security police limitation and can't use third party tools, then coding will be necessary. The answer from David Heffernan gives you the appropiate direction.
Or it can be done in batch, vbs or js without need of anything out of the system. WMI Win32_Process class should allow you to handle it.

How to reserve a core on a multi core system completely?

I would like to reserve one core for my application. On my searches I could find dwProcessAffinityMask to limit my process to run on the cores I want. But this does not
prevent threads of other processes to run on "my" core as well.
Is there a way to disallow a specific core/processor to be used by any (system-wide) process/thread except my process/thread?
Even if it was possible to set the SystemAffinityMask, this won't help because this would also prohibit the execution of my process/thread on that processor/core.
If your goal is to ensure that your process gets to run in a timely manner, just set a high priority for your process (for instance HIGH_PRIORITY_CLASS) using SetPriorityClass. Unless the system is running other equally high-priority work (of which there is little on a typical machine), your work will get to run immediately when it's ready to execute.

What processĀ API do I need to hook to track services?

I need to track to a log when a service or application in Windows is started, stopped, and whether it exits successfully or with an error code.
I understand that many services do not log their own start and stop times, or if they exit correctly, so it seems the way to go would have to be inserting a hook into the API that will catch when services/applications request a process space and relinquish it.
My question is what function do I need to hook in order to accomplish this, and is it even possible? I need it to work on Windows XP and 7, both 64-bit.
I think your best bet is to use a device driver. See PsSetCreateProcessNotifyRoutine.
Windows Vista has NotifyServiceStatusChange(), but only for single services. On earlier versions, it's not possible other than polling for changes or watching the event log.
If you're looking for a user-space solution, EnumProcesses() will return a current list. But it won't signal you with changes, you'd have to continually poll it and act on the differences.
If you're watching for a specific application or set of applications, consider assigning them to Job Objects, which are all about allowing you to place limits on processes and manage them externally. I think you could even associate Explorer with a job object, then all tasks launched by the user would be associated with your job object automatically. Something to look into, perhaps.

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