Update TaskContinuationOptions.xml

[Caleb-D]

add note on usage of NotOnFaulted regarding chains of continuation tasks

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Issue Details

---

add note on usage of NotOnFaulted regarding chains of continuation tasks

Author:	Caleb-D
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-System.Threading.Tasks, community-contribution
Milestone:	-

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[stephentoub]

I'm not really sure what benefit this is adding. It's also not entirely accurate; a task might end as canceled without there having ever been an exception involved.

[Caleb-D]

I guess the documentation is not clear enough. This is just the use case I ran into. I had to create myself a test project and reverse engineer how these TaskContinuationOptions flags actually worked.

Maybe this isn't the best way to address this problem, but at least it would be nice to know that myContinuedTask.Status->Canceled when previousTask.Status==Faulted and myContinuedTask.ContinuationOptions=NotOnFaulted, and that myContinuedTask2 will still be scheduled.

[Caleb-D]

Also, "multi-task continuations" seems vague and ambiguous. Are we talking about a chain of more than one continuation? Or a fan-out of continuations on one task? And does "not valid" mean you get a runtime exception, compile exception, undefined behavior? etc.

[stephentoub]

Also, "multi-task continuations" seems vague and ambiguous.

It's referring to the APIs that let you create continuations from multiple tasks, e.g. TaskFactory.ContinueWhenAll.

[Caleb-D]

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

Where do you suggest we go from here as far as documentation? Maybe I'm not the best one to make the changes since I don't have detailed knowledge of all the details.

[stephentoub]

I'm still not totally clear on what additional information you'd hope to see in the docs.

This particular enum value being edited is "NotOnCanceled" and it states "Specifies that the continuation task should not be scheduled if its antecedent was canceled." Is your concern that it doesn't spell out what state this continuation task will be in if the antecedent completes as Canceled? i.e. you'd want it to also say "If the antecedent ends in a canceled state, this continuation task will transition to a canceled state."?

[Caleb-D]

I think "If the antecedent ends in a canceled state, this continuation task will transition to a canceled state." would be a slight improvement. At least that helps me realize that not being scheduled doesn't mean "it gets discarded (and therefore any continuation tasks dependent on this continuation task get discarded)," which is what I initially thought.

You could follow that sentence with "Note that any continuation tasks dependent on this continuation task will still be scheduled, dependent on their TaskContinuationOptions."

[gewarren]

Closing this PR based on age and lack of closure in unresolved conversation.