The newest version of this document is also available as a html-formatted +web page you might find easier to navigate when reading it for the first +time: http://cvs.schmorp.de/libev/ev.html.

Libev is an event loop: you register interest in certain events (such as a file descriptor being readable or a timeout occuring), and it will manage these event sources and provide your program with events.

@@ -2111,6 +2114,20 @@ will have the struct ev_loop * as first argument, and you can creat additional independent event loops. Otherwise there will be no support for multiple event loops and there is no first event loop pointer argument. Instead, all functions act on the single default loop.

+ +

EV_MINPRI

EV_MAXPRI

The range of allowed priorities. EV_MINPRI must be smaller or equal to +EV_MAXPRI, but otherwise there are no non-obvious limitations. You can +provide for more priorities by overriding those symbols (usually defined +to be -2 and 2, respectively).

When doing priority-based operations, libev usually has to linearly search +all the priorities, so having many of them (hundreds) uses a lot of space +and time, so using the defaults of five priorities (-2 .. +2) is usually +fine.

If your embedding app does not need any priorities, defining these both to +0 will save some memory and cpu.

EV_PERIODIC_ENABLE

@@ -2224,16 +2241,48 @@ that everybody includes and which overrides some configure choices:

In this section the complexities of (many of) the algorithms used inside libev will be explained. For complexity discussions about backends see the documentation for ev_default_init.

All of the following are about amortised time: If an array needs to be +extended, libev needs to realloc and move the whole array, but this +happens asymptotically never with higher number of elements, so O(1) might +mean it might do a lengthy realloc operation in rare cases, but on average +it is much faster and asymptotically approaches constant time.

Starting and stopping timer/periodic watchers: O(log skipped_other_timers): +
This means that, when you have a watcher that triggers in one hour and +there are 100 watchers that would trigger before that then inserting will +have to skip those 100 watchers.
+
Changing timer/periodic watchers (by autorepeat, again): O(log skipped_other_timers): +
That means that for changing a timer costs less than removing/adding them +as only the relative motion in the event queue has to be paid for.
+
Starting io/check/prepare/idle/signal/child watchers: O(1)
Stopping check/prepare/idle watchers: O(1): +
These just add the watcher into an array or at the head of a list. +=item Stopping check/prepare/idle watchers: O(1)
+
Stopping an io/signal/child watcher: O(number_of_watchers_for_this_(fd/signal/pid % EV_PID_HASHSIZE)): +
These watchers are stored in lists then need to be walked to find the +correct watcher to remove. The lists are usually short (you don't usually +have many watchers waiting for the same fd or signal).
+
Finding the next timer per loop iteration: O(1)
Each change on a file descriptor per loop iteration: O(number_of_watchers_for_this_fd): +
A change means an I/O watcher gets started or stopped, which requires +libev to recalculate its status (and possibly tell the kernel).
+
Activating one watcher: O(1)
Priority handling: O(number_of_priorities): +
Priorities are implemented by allocating some space for each +priority. When doing priority-based operations, libev usually has to +linearly search all the priorities.
+

DESCRIPTION