Promises and Latches for Emacs Lisp

This package (ab)uses accept-process-output and processes to provide asynchronous blocking, allowing other functions to run before the current execution context completes. All blocking will freeze the Emacs display, but timers and I/O will continue to run. Use with caution.

Usage

Promises have deliver and retrieve methods.

;; Make promise
(defvar p (make-promise))

;; Deliver a value to the promise in 5 seconds.
(run-at-time 5 nil #'deliver p "Hello, world")

;; Retrieve the value from the promise. This blocks until a value is
;; delivered. The timer can still deliver a value when this is
;; blocked, but Emacs' display will freeze.
(retrieve p)

Latches have wait and notify, which can optionally pass a value.

This example turns an asynchronous function into a synchronous one. The function skewer-eval takes a string containing JavaScript and a callback, evals the string in a browser, and gives the evaluation result to the callback. Say we'd rather return the value directly,

(defun skewer-eval-synchronously (js-code)
  (lexical-let ((latch (make-one-time-latch)))
    (skewer-eval js-code (apply-partially #'notify latch))
    (wait latch)))

Garbage Collection

Latches use processes underneath and are not properly garbage collected. Use the destroy method to destroy them when done using them, or use a one-time-latch which will destroy itself automatically. Use destroy-all-latches when you're debugging/experimenting and made a mess of things.