How would you define a pool of goroutines to be executed at once?

try this: https://github.com/korovkin/limiter

 limiter := NewConcurrencyLimiter(10)
 limiter.Execute(func() {
        zenity(...) 
 })
 limiter.Wait()

I would spawn 4 worker goroutines that read the tasks from a common channel. Goroutines that are faster than others (because they are scheduled differently or happen to get simple tasks) will receive more task from this channel than others. In addition to that, I would use a sync.WaitGroup to wait for all workers to finish. The remaining part is just the creation of the tasks. You can see an example implementation of that approach here:

package main

import (
    "os/exec"
    "strconv"
    "sync"
)

func main() {
    tasks := make(chan *exec.Cmd, 64)

    // spawn four worker goroutines
    var wg sync.WaitGroup
    for i := 0; i < 4; i++ {
        wg.Add(1)
        go func() {
            for cmd := range tasks {
                cmd.Run()
            }
            wg.Done()
        }()
    }

    // generate some tasks
    for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {
        tasks <- exec.Command("zenity", "--info", "--text='Hello from iteration n."+strconv.Itoa(i)+"'")
    }
    close(tasks)

    // wait for the workers to finish
    wg.Wait()
}

There are probably other possible approaches, but I think this is a very clean solution that is easy to understand.

---

🧩 Modules

• Golang Concurrency Manager

---

📃 Template

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/zenthangplus/goccm"
    "math/rand"
    "runtime"
)

func main() {
    semaphore := goccm.New(runtime.NumCPU())
    
    for {
        semaphore.Wait()

        go func() {
            fmt.Println(rand.Int())
            semaphore.Done()
        }()
    }
    
    semaphore.WaitAllDone()
}

---

🎰 Optimal routine quantity

• If the operation is CPU bounded: runtime.NumCPU()
• Otherwise test with: time go run *.go

---

🔨 Configure

export GOPATH="$(pwd)/gopath"
go mod init *.go
go mod tidy

---

🧹 CleanUp

find "${GOPATH}" -exec chmod +w {} \;
rm --recursive --force "${GOPATH}"

---

A simple approach to throttling (execute f() N times but maximum maxConcurrency concurrently), just a scheme:

package main

import (
        "sync"
)

const maxConcurrency = 4 // for example

var throttle = make(chan int, maxConcurrency)

func main() {
        const N = 100 // for example
        var wg sync.WaitGroup
        for i := 0; i < N; i++ {
                throttle <- 1 // whatever number
                wg.Add(1)
                go f(i, &wg, throttle)
        }
        wg.Wait()
}

func f(i int, wg *sync.WaitGroup, throttle chan int) {
        defer wg.Done()
        // whatever processing
        println(i)
        <-throttle
}

Playground

I wouldn't probably call the throttle channel "dummy". IMHO it's an elegant way (it's not my invention of course), how to limit concurrency.

BTW: Please note that you're ignoring the returned error from cmd.Run().