How to debug deadlocks

yourbasic.org/golang

A deadlock happens when a group of goroutines are waiting for each other and none of them is able to proceed.

traffic jam

Take a look at this simple example.

func main() {
	ch := make(chan int)
	ch <- 1
	fmt.Println(<-ch)
}

The program will get stuck on the channel send operation waiting forever for someone to read the value. Go is able to detect situations like this at runtime. Here is the output from our program:

fatal error: all goroutines are asleep - deadlock!

goroutine 1 [chan send]:
main.main()
	.../deadlock.go:7 +0x6c

Debugging tips

A goroutine can get stuck

Common reasons are that

Currently Go only detects when the program as a whole freezes, not when a subset of goroutines get stuck.

With channels it’s often easy to figure out what caused a deadlock. Programs that make heavy use of mutexes can, on the other hand, be notoriously difficult to debug.

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