Concurrent Ruby

NOTE: A few API updates in v0.5.0 are not backward-compatible. Please see the release notes.

Modern concurrency tools for Ruby. Inspired by Erlang, Clojure, Scala, Haskell, F#, C#, Java, and classic concurrency patterns.

The design goals of this gem are:

Stay true to the spirit of the languages providing inspiration
But implement in a way that makes sense for Ruby
Keep the semantics as idiomatic Ruby as possible
Support features that make sense in Ruby
Exclude features that don't make sense in Ruby
Be small, lean, and loosely coupled

Features & Documentation

Please see the Concurrent Ruby Wiki or the API documentation for more information or join our mailing list.

There are many concurrency abstractions in this library. These abstractions can be broadly categorized into several general categories:

Asynchronous concurrency abstractions including Actor, Agent, Channel, Future, Promise, ScheculedTask, and TimerTask
Erlang-inspired Supervisor and other lifecycle classes/mixins for managing long-running threads
Thread-safe variables including M-Structures, I-Structures, thread-local variables, and atomic counters
Thread synchronization classes and algorithms including dataflow, timeout, condition, countdown latch, dependency counter, and event
Java-inspired thread pools
And many more...

Semantic Versioning

This gem adheres to the rules of semantic versioning.

Supported Ruby versions

MRI 1.9.2, 1.9.3, 2.0, 2.1, JRuby (1.9 mode), and Rubinius 2.x. This library is pure Ruby and has no gem dependencies. It should be fully compatible with any Ruby interpreter that is 1.9.x compliant.

Example

Many more code examples can be found in the documentation for each class (linked above). This one simple example shows some of the power of this gem.

require 'concurrent'
require 'faker'

class EchoActor < Concurrent::Actor
  def act(*message)
    puts "#{message} handled by #{self}"
  end
end

mailbox, pool = EchoActor.pool(5)

timer_proc = proc do
  mailbox.post(Faker::Company.bs)
end

t1 = Concurrent::TimerTask.new(execution_interval: rand(5)+1, &timer_proc)
t2 = Concurrent::TimerTask.new(execution_interval: rand(5)+1, &timer_proc)

overlord = Concurrent::Supervisor.new

overlord.add_worker(t1)
overlord.add_worker(t2)
pool.each{|actor| overlord.add_worker(actor)}

overlord.run!

#=> ["mesh proactive platforms"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bdf8>
#=> ["maximize sticky portals"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bdd0>
#=> ["morph bleeding-edge markets"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd80>
#=> ["engage clicks-and-mortar interfaces"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd58>
#=> ["monetize transparent infrastructures"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd30>
#=> ["morph sexy e-tailers"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bdf8>
#=> ["exploit dot-com models"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bdd0>
#=> ["incentivize virtual deliverables"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd80>
#=> ["enhance B2B models"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd58>
#=> ["envisioneer real-time architectures"] handled by #<EchoActor:0x007fa5ac18bd30>

overlord.stop

Disclaimer

Remember, there is no silver bullet in concurrent programming. Concurrency is hard. These tools will help ease the burden, but at the end of the day it is essential that you know what you are doing.

Decouple business logic from concurrency logic
Test business logic separate from concurrency logic
Keep the intersection of business logic and concurrency and small as possible
Don't share mutable data unless absolutely necessary
Protect shared data as much as possible (prefer immutability)
Don't mix Ruby's concurrency primitives with asynchronous concurrency libraries

Contributors

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request