Question: I am investigating the design of a work queue processor where the QueueProcessor retrieves a Command Pattern object from the Queue and executes it in a new thread.

I am trying to get my head around a potential Queue lockup scenario where nested Commands may result in a deadlock.

E.G.

A FooCommand object is placed onto the queue which the QueueProcessor then executes in its own thread.

The executing FooCommand places a BarCommand onto the queue.

Assuming that the maximum allowed threads was only 1 thread, the QueueProcessor would be in a deadlocked state since the FooCommand is infinitely waiting for the BarCommand to complete.

How can this situation be managed? Is a queue object the right object for the job? Are there any checks and balances that can be put into place to resolve this issue?

Many thanks. ( application uses C# .NET 3.0 )

Answer: 
You could redesign things so that FooCommand doesn't use the queue to run BarCommand but runs it directly, or you could split FooCommand into two, and have the first half stop immediately after queueing BarCommand, and have BarCommand queue the second have of FooCommand after it's done its work.
I assume you want to queue BarCommand so it is able to run in parallel with FooCommand, but BarCommand will need the result at some later point. If this is the case then I would recommend using Future from the Parallel Extensions library. 

Bart DeSmet has a [good blog entry](http://community.bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/archive/2008/07/03/parallel-extensions-using-futures-to-calculate-pi-in-hexadecimal.aspx) on this. Basically you want to do:

```

public void FooCommand()
{
    Future<int> BarFuture = new Future<int>( () => BarCommand() );

    // Do Foo's Processing - Bar will (may) be running in parallel

    int barResult = BarFuture.Value;

    // More processing that needs barResult
}

```

With libararies such as the Parallel Extensions I'd avoid "rolling your own" scheduling.