time: make Timer/Ticker channels not receivable with old values after Stop or Reset returns

[bcmills]

In #14383 (comment), @rsc said:

There is an argument for making

tr := time.NewTimer(0)
tr.Stop()
// There may or may not be a value in the channel now. But definitely
// one should not be added after we receive it.
select {
        case <-tr.C:
        default:
}

work, but it doesn't today, and we're certainly not going to do that for Go 1.7. Maybe early in Go 1.8 if someone wants to file a different bug.

As far as I can tell, no different bug was filed: the documentation for (*Timer).Stop still says:

go/src/time/sleep.go

Lines 57 to 66 in 7d2473d

	// To ensure the channel is empty after a call to Stop, check the
	// return value and drain the channel.
	// For example, assuming the program has not received from t.C already:
	//
	// if !t.Stop() {
	// <-t.C
	// }
	//
	// This cannot be done concurrent to other receives from the Timer's
	// channel.

and that behavior is still resulting in subtle bugs (#27169). (Note that @rsc himself assumed that a select should work in this way in #14038 (comment).)

I think we should tighten up the invariants of (*Timer).Stop to eliminate this subtlety.

CC @empijei @matttproud @the80srobot @ianlancetaylor

[bcmills]

For an example program illustrating why a user might reasonably expect (and attempt to make use of) this behavior, see https://play.golang.org/p/mDkMG67ehAI.

[empijei]

Thanks for filing this.

I also found this behavior puzzling and apparently I got it wrong too as I was expecting no values to be sent after t.Stop() returned.

If, as I understand now, a value might be sent after the call to Stop has returned, is there any way to correctly re-use a timer?

[bcmills]

If, as I understand now, a value might be sent after the call to Stop has returned, is there any way to correctly re-use a timer?

If you know that no other goroutine is receiving on the C channel, then you can receive unconditionally after the call to Stop returns false, and it won't actually matter whether the value was delivered before or after the call to Stop returned.

(The select-with-default after Stop is where the bug occurs, and none of the examples in your post do that — they don't need to, because in your examples the reads on t.C are all on the same goroutine as the calls to t.Stop.)

[ianlancetaylor]

In the current implementation, this can probably be done by changing runOneTimer to move the Cas away from timerRunning until after the invocation of f.

[rsc]

Added to proposal process to resolve whether to do this, after mention in #38945.

[rsc]

This made its first appearance in the proposal minutes last week.
You can imagine ways to break Go programs with this, such as by

t := time.NewTimer(1*time.Second)
time.Sleep(2*time.Second)
t.Stop()
<-t.C

This would succeed today, but if we clear the channel during Stop it would start blocking.
We would have to define that in the case where Stop pulls the element back out of the channel buffer, it returns true, meaning it "stopped" the timer (false means the timer already expired; expired would now mean "expired and was observed by a channel receive on t.C").

On the other hand, there is technically a race here, and it's not guaranteed that this snippet never blocks, especially on a loaded system. The correct snippet, even today, is:

t := time.NewTimer(1*time.Second)
time.Sleep(2*time.Second)
if !t.Stop() {
    <-t.C
}

That example would be unaffected, because Stop would pull the buffered element back out of the channel and then return true, signaling to the caller that there is nothing to receive.

We could make the change at the start of a release cycle and be ready to roll it back if real (as opposed to hypothetical) problems arose.

Thoughts?

[bcmills]

While I like the behavior of pulling the value back out of the channel and having Stop return true, I don't think it is actually backward-compatible, depending on how the len builtin for channels interacts with the memory model.

For example, this program today is not reported as a race and the receive is guaranteed to never block, but would deadlock if Stop clears the channel:

package main

import (
        "fmt"
        "time"
)

func main() {
        t := time.NewTimer(1 * time.Second)
        for len(t.C) == 0 {
                time.Sleep(time.Millisecond)
        }
        t.Stop()
        <-t.C
        fmt.Println("ok")
}

That is why I had restricted my original proposal to guarantee only that no value is sent after Stop returns.

[ianlancetaylor]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what it means to guarantee that no value is sent on the channel after Stop returns. As far as I can see, that is already guaranteed--maybe not in the documentation, but certainly in the implementation. What is the actual change that you are suggesting?

[bcmills]

@ianlancetaylor, the program given in https://play.golang.org/p/Wm1x8DmYoQo should run indefinitely without reporting any delayed times. Instead, it reports a nonzero rate of delayed timer sends.

On my Xeon workstation:

example.com$ gotip version
go version devel +b2ce3931 Tue May 26 22:28:45 2020 +0000 linux/amd64

example.com$ gotip run main.go
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:16:46.951252699 -0400 EDT m=+2.886904949 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:16:46.951252454 -0400 EDT m=+2.886904697.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:00.794561424 -0400 EDT m=+16.730213661 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:00.794559263 -0400 EDT m=+16.730211512.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:00.774413697 -0400 EDT m=+16.710065937 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:00.77440917 -0400 EDT m=+16.710061421.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:03.679525664 -0400 EDT m=+19.615177943 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:03.679522832 -0400 EDT m=+19.615178663.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:06.024962313 -0400 EDT m=+21.960614549 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:06.024960025 -0400 EDT m=+21.960612270.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:06.692670731 -0400 EDT m=+22.628322974 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:06.692669848 -0400 EDT m=+22.628322092.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:22.942118175 -0400 EDT m=+38.877770415 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:22.942117468 -0400 EDT m=+38.877769713.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:22.901857123 -0400 EDT m=+38.837509358 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:22.901855958 -0400 EDT m=+38.837508205.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:27.342696328 -0400 EDT m=+43.278348567 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:27.342693224 -0400 EDT m=+43.278345463.
Timer stopped at 2020-05-27 22:17:28.993568136 -0400 EDT m=+44.929220391 subsequently received time
                 2020-05-27 22:17:28.993571601 -0400 EDT m=+44.929223839.
Received 10 delayed times after 128517449 iterations.

In all cases, the failure mode is the same: at some point after Stop returns, the channel receives a very-slightly-earlier timestamp. That is: the return from Stop is not synchronized with the actual send to the channel.

Instead, I propose that the send to the channel, if it occurs at all, ought to happen before the return from Stop.

[ianlancetaylor]

Thanks for the example. If the code is written per the documentation of time.Timer.Stop, it works correctly (https://play.golang.org/p/KlC__ujuE5M).

And now I see how this happens. It's because in runOneTimer we set the status to timerNoStatus before we call the function that sends a value on the channel, which permits deltimer and therefore time.Timer.Stop to return false before we send the value. The return of false does reliably mean that a value will be sent on the channel, but the value may not have been sent when Stop returns.

I don't see an easy fix in the current implementation. We can't leave the timer in timerRunning state while we unlock pp.timersLock in order to run the function.

[bcmills]

Would it make sense to change the timer to the timerModifying state while running the callback (which should be short), and then to timerNoStatus after the callback completes?

(Or would that potentially induce starvation for a time.Ticker with a very short period?)

[bcmills]

The same send-after-Stop problem appears to also applies to time.Ticker, which I suppose is not a surprise because they share the same underlying timer implementation.

(Code in https://play.golang.org/p/Y_Hz4xkYr07, but it doesn't reproduce there due to the Playground's faketime patch.)

[ianlancetaylor]

It's actually a bit more complicated than I thought. If we leave the timer status as timerRunning (or timerModifying), then if the timer function does anything that touches the timer, it can hang. For example, the scavenger uses a timer with a function of wakeScavenger that expects to stop the timer. That would hang waiting for the timer to leave timerRunning status. The netpoll code also manipulates the timer in the timer function, though I think it wouldn't cause any problems here.

[rsc]

Let's try to separate the discussion of semantics from implementation.

The docs say:

To ensure the channel is empty after a call to Stop, check the return value
and drain the channel. For example, assuming the program has not received
from t.C already:

    if !t.Stop() {
    	<-t.C
    }

The proposed change in semantics is to make it that no receive can ever happen after t.Stop returns. That would mean that under the assumption - "assuming the program has not received from t.C already" - t.Stop would never return false anymore. So the above code would no longer be required (and if left alone would just never execute the if body).

This would avoid the problem of people not knowing to write that fixup code or not understanding the subtlety involved. Certainly we've all confused ourselves enough just thinking through this over the years.

That's the proposed semantic change.

There are also questions about how to implement that - it's not just the easy "pull the item back out of the buffer" that I suggested before - but certainly it is possible. Let's figure out if we agree about the semantic change.

(Another side-effect would probably be that len(t.C) would always return 0, meaning the channel would appear to be unbuffered. But we've never promised buffering in the docs. The buffering is only there because I was trying to avoid blocking the timer thread. It's a hack.)

[bcmills]

I agree that if we could change the semantics to ensure that no receive is possible after Stop, that would be preferable to both the current behavior and the originally-proposed change to only disallow a send-after-Stop.

However, I don't see any way to do that without breaking the example in https://play.golang.org/p/r77N1PfXuu5.

That program explicitly relies on the buffering behaviors of t.C: specifically, that len(t.C) becomes nonzero when the timer fires, and that the buffered value remains receivable after t.Stop(). Neither of those behaviors is strictly guaranteed by the documentation, but nor does anything in the documentation explicitly reserve them as subject to change — and they have been observable since CL 4063043 over nine(!) years ago.

Disallowing a receive after Stop must necessarily break one of those two behaviors. If we marked the buffer as non-empty but then retracted the buffered value in t.Stop(), then the program would block forever on the subsequent receive. If we instead made the channel unbuffered — or, equivalently, hooked the runtime to avoid sending to it until some goroutine is ready to receive — then the program would loop forever waiting for len(t.C) to become nonzero.

So the only way I see to make that change in semantics would be to declare that this example program is already incorrect, because it is relying on undocumented behavior regardless of the stability of that behavior. I could be wrong, but given how long this behavior has been in place I suspect that changing it would break real programs.

[ianlancetaylor]

Do you know of any programs that call len on a timer channel?

[bcmills]

I do not know of any specifically, but given the 9-year interval and Hyrum's law I would be surprised if they did not exist.

If we are willing to assume that such programs do not exist (or declare that they are invalid if they do exist, because the buffering behavior was never documented), then preventing the receive seems ok.

[rsc]

Above, we identified that one possible way that the semantic change being discussed might break code is if the code used len to poll whether the timer had gone off. We would have to make len report zero all the time, simulating an unbuffered channel. Code that depended on len sometimes being non-zero could possibly break.

My intuition was that using len on a channel is racy and almost never better than a select with a default case, so there's a decent chance that not too much code is using len. To test this hypothesis, I searched my local corpus of Go packages for length on timer channels and sifted through the results with @bcmills. We found that use of len on timer channels is (1) rare, (2) almost always incorrect, (3) when incorrect, always fixed by the new semantics.

The corpus I am using is a collection of the latest of each major version of each module listed in the Go index (index.golang.org) as of late March. There are 134,485 modules with distinct paths in my corpus. Of those, 17,021 mention time.NewTimer or time.NewTicker. Of those, 15 modules (slightly under 0.1% of the 17,021) contain code matching len\(.*\.C\) in which the len operation applies to a timer or ticker channel.

Of the 15 modules applying len to a timer or ticker channel: one is an awkward simulation of a non-blocking select, already removed in a later commit; one uses len in debug prints to monitor the ticker; and the remaining 13 are buggy.

The semantic change proposed in this issue would make all the buggy code correct, assuming we apply the same change to Reset as we've discussed for Stop. We should probably also apply the change to time.Ticker's Reset and Stop.

Use of len to simulate non-blocking select

github.com/packetzoom/logslammer

github.com/packetzoom/logslammer version v0.0.3 output/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.go (April 7, 2016)
contains the following code in output/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.go:

func readInputChannel(idx *Indexer, receiveChan chan *buffer.Event) {
	// Drain the channel only if we have room
	if idx.bulkService.NumberOfActions() < esSendBuffer {
		select {
		case ev := <-receiveChan:
			idx.index(ev)
		}
	} else {
		log.Printf("Internal Elasticsearch buffer is full, waiting")
		time.Sleep(1 * time.Second)
	}
}

...

// Loop events and publish to elasticsearch
tick := time.NewTicker(time.Duration(esFlushInterval) * time.Second)

for {
	readInputChannel(idx, receiveChan)

	if len(tick.C) > 0 || len(es.term) > 0 {
		select {
		case <-tick.C:
			idx.flush()
		case <-es.term:
			tick.Stop()
			log.Println("Elasticsearch received term signal")
			break
		}
	}
}

This code seems to be using the len checks as an alternative to a non-blocking select on those two channels. It's also worth noting that when received events are rare, the tick receive and corresponding idx.flush may be arbitrarily delayed by the blocking receive in readInputChannel. It's possible that select was meant to be non-blocking.

The semantic change proposed in this issue would make the code never process ticks, since len(tick.C) would always be zero. However, in the latest untagged commit (February 17, 2017), the test of len(tick.C) has been removed. Also, the lack of any commits in the last three years, nor even a tag of the updated code, suggests the code is unmaintained and no longer used.

Use of len for logging/debugging prints

github.com/uber/cherami-server

github.com/uber/cherami-server version v1.28.1 services/outputhost/messagecache.go (November 29, 2017) has a logPumpHealth method that logs information about the capacity and length of its ticker channel, among others:

func (msgCache *cgMsgCache) logPumpHealth() {
	logPumpHealthOnce.Do(func() {
		msgCache.lclLg.WithFields(bark.Fields{
			...
			`RedeliveryTickerCap`:         cap(msgCache.redeliveryTicker.C),
		}).Info(`cache pump health capacities`)
	})

	msgCache.lclLg.WithFields(bark.Fields{
		...
		`RedeliveryTickerLen`:         len(msgCache.redeliveryTicker.C),
	}).Info(`cache pump health`)

	lg := msgCache.lclLg
	now := common.Now()

	...
	if msgCache.lastRedeliveryTickerFull > 0 {
		lg = lg.WithField(`RedeliveryTicker`, common.UnixNanoTime(now-msgCache.lastRedeliveryTickerFull).ToSeconds())
	}

	lg.Info(`cache pump health last channel full times`)
}

And the `updatePumpHealth method does:

func (msgCache *cgMsgCache) updatePumpHealth() int {
	now := common.Now()
	fullCount := 0
	...
	if cap(msgCache.redeliveryTicker.C) <= len(msgCache.redeliveryTicker.C) {
		msgCache.lastRedeliveryTickerFull = now
		fullCount++
	}
	return fullCount
}

The logging would never trigger anymore, and the pump health update would register the channel as “full” for being unbuffered (length and capacity both 0).

However, the repository's README says that the project is “deprecated and not maintained.”

Racy use of len to drain channel after Stop

github.com/Freezerburn/go-coroutine

github.com/Freezerburn/go-coroutine v1.0.1 src/github.com/Freezerburn/coroutine/embed.go:

// Guarantee the timer channel is drained.
// Despite the docs saying to only check the return value of Stop, it's possible for Stop to return false without
// there being an item in the channel, so we also double-check if there is an item in the channel before attempting
// to drain it.
if !e.waitTimer.Stop() && len(e.waitTimer.C) > 0 {
	<-e.waitTimer.C
}
e.waitTimer.Reset(duration)
<-e.waitTimer.C

This use of len is potentially racing with the pending send that Stop did not stop. The correct code today would be to track whether e.waitTimer.C has been received from already and use that state in place of the length check. In fact, since this code is the only use of e.waitTimer, the timer will have only already fired and not been received from on the first execution of the method containing this code. Every time the method completes, the timer has expired and been read from. The first execution is different because e.waitTimer is initialized to time.NewTimer(0).

The proposed semantic change to Stop would make this code correct: on the first call, e.waitTimer.Stop would return true—the Stop prevented the zero-duration timer event from being sent. On subsequent iterations, e.waitTimer.Stop would return false—the timer event was already received by the previous call—and len would be zero, bypassing the no-longer-necessary draining code.

There is another instance of the pattern later in the file:

if !e.receiveTimer.Stop() && len(e.receiveTimer.C) > 0 {
	<-e.receiveTimer.C
}

e.receiveTimer.Reset(duration)
select {
case <-e.receiver:
case <-e.receiveTimer.C:
}

Like e.waitTimer, e.receiveTimer is initialized to time.NewTimer(0).
On top of that, the code does not record whether the select received from
e.receiveTimer.C, as it must for proper interpretation of the Stop result.
This lack of memory is partly compensated for by the racy (buggy) len check.

The same analysis applies: if the Stop guarantees to stop any future send,
then either the receive has already happened, in which case Stop returns false
and len is zero, so or the receive is prevented, in which case Stop returns true.
Either way, the code would now bypass the no-longer-necessary draining code.

The current latest commit rewrites both of those code snippets to use a helper that is different (avoiding len entirely) but still buggy:

func resetTimer(t *time.Timer, d time.Duration) {
	if !t.Stop() {
		// I've seen cases where Stop returns false, but there isn't an item in the channel, causing the receive to
		// hang forever.
		select {
		case <-t.C:
		default:
		}
	}
	t.Reset(d)
}

The same analysis applies, since a non-blocking select is just a less racy “len plus receive” operation. Removing the race between the length check and the receive did not eliminate the race with the delayed timer send. But the proposed semantic change would.

github.com/MatrixAINetwork/go-matrix

github.com/MatrixAINetwork/go-matrix v1.1.7 p2p/buckets.go (May 20, 2020):

for {
	select {
	case <-timeoutTimer.C:
		...
		if !timeoutTimer.Stop() && len(timeoutTimer.C) > 0 {
			<-timeoutTimer.C
		}
		timeoutTimer.Reset(time.Second * 60)
	case h := <-b.blockChain:
		if !timeoutTimer.Stop() && len(timeoutTimer.C) > 0 {
			<-timeoutTimer.C
		}
		timeoutTimer.Reset(time.Second * 60)
		...
	}
}

This code is trying to make sure that each iteration of the select falls into the timeout case after 60 seconds.
For the most part it succeeds, but a receive from b.blockChain right at the moment the timer went off would fail to drain timeoutTimer.C, causing the next iteration to fall into the timeout case immediately.

Same race as in previous example; proposed semantic change applies the same fix.

github.com/cobolbaby/log-agent

github.com/cobolbaby/log-agent 71f7f9f watchdog/watchdog.go:

timer := time.NewTimer(delay)
...
for {
	select {
	case e = <-eventChan:
		...
		// timer may be not active, and fired
		if !timer.Stop() && len(timer.C) > 0 {
			<-timer.C //ctry to drain from the channel
		}
		timer.Reset(delay)
	case <-timer.C:
		...
		return
	}
}

Same race; same fix.

github.com/dcarbone/go-cacheman

github.com/dcarbone/go-cacheman v1.1.2 key_manager.go:

if !lifespan.Stop() && len(lifespan.C) > 0 {
	<-lifespan.C
}
lifespan.Reset(km.idleTTL)

Same race; same fix (appears four times in file).

github.com/myENA/consultant/v2

github.com/myENA/consultant/v2 v2.1.1 service.go:

if !refreshTimer.Stop() && len(refreshTimer.C) > 0 {
	<-refreshTimer.C
}
refreshTimer.Reset(ms.refreshInterval)

Same race; same fix (appears three times in file).

github.com/smartcontractkit/chainlink

github.com/smartcontractkit/chainlink v0.7.8 core/services/fluxmonitor/flux_monitor.go:

// stopTimer stops and clears the timer as suggested by the documentation.
func stopTimer(arg *time.Timer) {
	if !arg.Stop() && len(arg.C) > 0 {
		// Residual events are the timer's channel and need to be cleared.
		//
		// Refer to timer.Stop's documentation or
		// https://developpaper.com/detailed-explanation-of-the-trap-of-timer-in-golang/
		<-arg.C
	}
}

Same race; same fix. This is of course not the code suggested by the documentation, although it does match the (incorrect) linked blog post.

This code was removed without comment in v0.8.0.

github.com/vntchain/go-vnt

github.com/vntchain/go-vnt v0.6.4-alpha.6 producer/worker.go:

// The stop command may be happen when the round timer is timeout but not deal with
// the timeout event, so cleaning the channel of roundTimer is needed.
if false == self.roundTimer.Stop() && len(self.roundTimer.C) > 0 {
	<-self.roundTimer.C
	log.Warn("worker.roundTimer.C still has a expired event, now has been cleaned")
}

Same race; same fix.

github.com/eBay/akutan

github.com/eBay/akutan 9a750f2 src/github.com/ebay/akutan/util/clocks/wall.go:

timer.Stop()
for len(timer.C) > 0 {
	<-timer.C
}
...
timer.Reset(wake.Sub(Wall.Now()))

Same race; same fix.

github.com/piotrnar/gocoin

github.com/piotrnar/gocoin 820d7ad client/main.go:

SaveBlockChain.Stop()
for len(SaveBlockChain.C) > 0 {
	<-SaveBlockChain.C
}
if common.BlockChainSynchronized {
	SaveBlockChain.Reset(SaveBlockChainAfter)
} else {
	SaveBlockChain.Reset(SaveBlockChainAfterNoSync)
}

Same race; same fix.

Racy use of len to drain channel before Reset

github.com/qlcchain/go-qlc

github.com/qlcchain/go-qlc v1.3.5 p2p/sync.go:

if len(ss.pullTimer.C) > 0 {
	<-ss.pullTimer.C
}
ss.pullTimer.Reset(pullReqTimeOut)

This is the usual pattern from the previous section, except there is no call to Stop,
so the receives are racing against an unstopped timer instead of the dying gasps of a stopped timer. But the race is the same.

If we change Reset to have the same guarantee as Stop, namely that no send from the old timer setting (before the Reset) can complete after Reset returns, then a plain call to Reset without Stop like in this code becomes correct, even without the if statement. With the proposed change, the if body would never execute.

Racy use of len to drain channel after Reset

github.com/chenjie199234/Corelib

github.com/chenjie199234/Corelib 2d8c16542cbe logger/logger.go:

for {
	select {
	case <-tmer.C:
		...
		tmer.Reset(500 * time.Millisecond)
		if len(tmer.C) > 0 {
			<-tmer.C
		}
	case <-l.update:
		...
		tmer.Reset(500 * time.Millisecond)
		if len(tmer.C) > 0 {
			<-tmer.C
		}
	case <-l.refresh:
		...
	}
}

This is like the previous example but the draining happens after Reset, making it race with the newly reset timer. A bad scheduling pause that introduced a half-second delay in goroutine execution between the timer being reset and the draining would cause a legitimate timer event to be discarded.

This entire package was removed on April 20.

Racy use of len to drain channel without Stop/Reset

github.com/indeedsecurity/carbonbeat

github.com/indeedsecurity/carbonbeat v1.0.0 app/carbonbeat.go:

ticker := time.NewTicker(bt.config.Period)
for {
	select {
	case <-bt.done:
		...
		return nil
	case <-ticker.C:
		//Remove all ticks from the ticker channel, do not "catch up"
		for len(ticker.C) > 0 {
			<-ticker.C
		}
	}
	...
}

Strictly speaking, this code is not wrong, but it is also not useful.
The ticker channel has a buffer of length 1.
In the instant after the receive just completed, the buffer is almost certainly empty.
The check is racing with the next send, but very unlikely to lose that race.
Changing the len to always return 0 will not have any discernible impact
on this code.

github.com/indeedsecurity/carbonbeat/v2

github.com/indeedsecurity/carbonbeat/v2 v2.0.2 app/carbonbeat.go contains the same code.

[rsc]

For what it's worth, seeing all that buggy code as evidence of people struggling to use the current t.Stop and t.Reset correctly in single-goroutine use cases only makes me that much more convinced we should try the proposed change.

[rsc]

Discussion ongoing, so leaving this for another week, but it seems headed for likely accept. Please speak up if you think this is a bad idea.

[seebs]

I think this is an excellent idea and I'd bet that I've written at least one piece of code which lacks, but needs, the fixup code.

[rogpeppe]

Is this actually the same issue as this old one? #11513

[rsc]

@rogpeppe, yes it certainly subsumes that one. The example I gave there in #11513 (comment) would definitely change but after seeing real uses, I think more code will be fixed than would break. It can be an early in cycle change.

Also, in that comment I said it's not the library's job to "throw away values already sent on the channel". The fix I'm suggesting above makes the channel (indistinguishable from) unbuffered instead, so there are no values "already sent".

[rsc]

Based on the discussion above, this sounds like a likely accept.

One possible implementation would be:

1. Find a bit in the channel struct to mark timer channels.
2. Stop inlining chanlen/chancap.
3. Make chanlen/chancap return 0 for timer channels even though the representation has buffer size 1.
4. In Stop/Reset, clear the buffer if there's something in it.

There are other more involved implementations (see for example #8898), but this simple change seems like the shortest path to the semantics we've been discussing.

[rsc]

No change in consensus, so accepting.