sysvmq Build Status

sysvmq is a C extension that wraps SysV IPC Message Queues. It's similar to the POSIX MQ Ruby wrapper. Message queues are handy for interprocess communication where you want to be able to take down either endpoint easily. The main disadvantage of SysV message queues over POSIX MQs (on Linux) is that SysV doesn't expose a file descriptor to do e.g. select(2) on.

Note that sysvmq doesn't rely on any third-party message broker. The message queue is handled by the kernel. It's extremely stable and performant.

Installation

Add sysvm to your Gemfile.

gem 'sysvmq'

Currently known to work on Linux and OS X for MRI >= 2.0.

Usage

# Create a message queue with a 1024 byte buffer.
require 'sysvmq'
mq = SysVMQ.new(0xDEADC0DE, 1024, SysVMQ::IPC_CREAT | 0666)

mq.send "Hellø Wårld!"
assert_equal 1, mq.stats[:count]

assert_equal "Hellø Wårld!", mq.receive

# Raise an exception instead of blocking until a message is available
mq.receive(0, SysVMQ::IPC_NOWAIT)

ensure
# Delete queue
mq.destroy

Todo

  • Explain messages types
  • Add named params for flags (e.g. mq.receive(:front, blocking: false)) instead of ORing flags directly.
  • Add IPC_INFO on Linux
  • Add all of IPC_STAT