How to guarantee a new thread is created when using the Task.StartNew method

Question

From what I can tell I have misleading bits of information. I need to have a separate thread running in the background.

At the moment I do it like this:

var task = Task.Factory.StartNew
         (CheckFiles
          , cancelCheckFile.Token
          , TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning
          , TaskScheduler.Default);//Check for files on another thread

 private void CheckFiles()
 {
    while (!cancelCheckFile.Token.IsCancellationRequested)
    {
        //do stuff
    }
 }

This always creates a new thread for me. However after several discussions even if it is marked as LongRunning doesn't guarantee that a new thread will be created.

In the past I have done something like this:

thQueueChecker = new Thread(new ThreadStart(CheckQueue));
thQueueChecker.IsBackground = true;
thQueueChecker.Name = "CheckQueues" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString();
thQueueChecker.Start();


private void CheckQueue()
{
   while (!ProgramEnding)
   {
            //do stuff
   }
}

Would you recommend that I go back to this approach to guarantee a new thread is used?

Answer 1

The default task scheduler ThreadPoolTaskScheduler does indeed always create a new thread for long running task. It does not use the thread pool as you can see. It is no different as the manual approach to create the thread by yourself. In theory it could happen that the thread scheduler of .NET 4.5 does something different but in practice it is unlikely to change.

protected internal override void QueueTask(Task task)
{     
  if ((task.Options & TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning) != TaskCreationOptions.None)
  {
    new Thread(s_longRunningThreadWork) { IsBackground = true }.Start(task);
  }
  else
  {
    bool forceGlobal = 
        (task.Options & TaskCreationOptions.PreferFairness) != TaskCreationOptions.None;
     ThreadPool.UnsafeQueueCustomWorkItem(task, forceGlobal);
  }
}