Can I use std::async without waiting for the future limitation?

Question

High level
I want to call some functions with no return value in a async mode without waiting for them to finish. If I use std::async the future object doesn't destruct until the task is over, this make the call not sync in my case.

Example

void sendMail(const std::string& address, const std::string& message)
{
    //sending the e-mail which takes some time...
}

myResonseType processRequest(args...)
{
    //Do some processing and valuate the address and the message...

    //Sending the e-mail async
    auto f = std::async(std::launch::async, sendMail, address, message);

    //returning the response ASAP to the client
    return myResponseType;

} //<-- I'm stuck here until the async call finish to allow f to be destructed.
  // gaining no benefit from the async call.

My questions are

1. Is there a way to overcome this limitation?
2. if (1) is no, should I implement once a thread that will take those "zombie" futures and wait on them?
3. Is (1) and (2) are no, is there any other option then just build my own thread pool?

note:
I rather not using the option of thread+detach (suggested by @galop1n) since creating a new thread have an overhead I wish to avoid. While using std::async (at least on MSVC) is using an inner thread pool.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can move the future into a global object, so when the local future's destructor runs it doesn't have to wait for the asynchronous thread to complete.

std::vector<std::future<void>> pending_futures;

myResonseType processRequest(args...)
{
    //Do some processing and valuate the address and the message...

    //Sending the e-mail async
    auto f = std::async(std::launch::async, sendMail, address, message);

    // transfer the future's shared state to a longer-lived future
    pending_futures.push_back(std::move(f));

    //returning the response ASAP to the client
    return myResponseType;

}

N.B. This is not safe if the asynchronous thread refers to any local variables in the processRequest function.

While using std::async (at least on MSVC) is using an inner thread pool.

That's actually non-conforming, the standard explicitly says tasks run with std::launch::async must run as if in a new thread, so any thread-local variables must not persist from one task to another. It doesn't usually matter though.