This is not an existing class, but documentation of the interface that Scheduler object should comply to in order to be used as argument to Fiber.scheduler and handle non-blocking fibers. See also the “Non-blocking fibers” section in Fiber class docs for explanations of some concepts.
Scheduler's behavior and usage are expected to be as follows:
When the execution in the non-blocking Fiber reaches some blocking operation (like sleep, wait for a process, or a non-ready I/O), it calls some of the scheduler's hook methods, listed below.
Scheduler somehow registers what the current fiber is waiting on, and yields control to other fibers with Fiber.yield (so the fiber would be suspended while expecting its wait to end, and other fibers in the same thread can perform)
At the end of the current thread execution, the scheduler's method close is called
The scheduler runs into a wait loop, checking all the blocked fibers (which it has registered on hook calls) and resuming them when the awaited resource is ready (e.g. I/O ready or sleep time elapsed).
A typical implementation would probably rely for this closing loop on a gem like EventMachine or Async.
This way concurrent execution will be achieved transparently for every individual Fiber's code.
Hook methods are:
(the list is expanded as Ruby developers make more methods having non-blocking calls)
When not specified otherwise, the hook implementations are mandatory: if they are not implemented, the methods trying to call hook will fail. To provide backward compatibility, in the future hooks will be optional (if they are not implemented, due to the scheduler being created for the older Ruby version, the code which needs this hook will not fail, and will just behave in a blocking fashion).
It is also strongly recommended that the scheduler implements the fiber method, which is delegated to by Fiber.schedule.
Sample toy implementation of the scheduler can be found in
Ruby's code, in test/fiber/scheduler.rb
Invoked by any method that performs a non-reverse DNS lookup. The most notable method is Addrinfo.getaddrinfo, but there are many other.
The method is expected to return an array of strings corresponding to ip
addresses the hostname
is resolved to, or nil
if
it can not be resolved.
Fairly exhaustive list of all possible call-sites:
Addrinfo.getaddrinfo
Addrinfo.tcp
Addrinfo.udp
Addrinfo.ip
Addrinfo.new
Addrinfo.marshal_load
SOCKSSocket.new
TCPServer.new
TCPSocket.new
IPSocket.getaddress
TCPSocket.gethostbyname
UDPSocket#connect
UDPSocket#bind
UDPSocket#send
Socket.getaddrinfo
Socket.gethostbyname
Socket.pack_sockaddr_in
Socket.sockaddr_in
Socket.unpack_sockaddr_in
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_address_resolve(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by methods like Thread#join, and by Mutex, to
signify that current Fiber is blocked until
further notice (e.g. unblock) or until
timeout
has elapsed.
blocker
is what we are waiting on, informational only (for
debugging and logging). There are no guarantee about its value.
Expected to return boolean, specifying whether the blocking operation was successful or not.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_block(VALUE self) { }
Called when the current thread exits. The scheduler is expected to implement this method in order to allow all waiting fibers to finalize their execution.
The suggested pattern is to implement the main event loop in the close method.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_close(VALUE self) { }
Implementation of the Fiber.schedule. The method is expected to immediately run the given block of code in a separate non-blocking fiber, and to return that Fiber.
Minimal suggested implementation is:
def fiber(&block) fiber = Fiber.new(blocking: false, &block) fiber.resume fiber end
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_fiber(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by IO#read to read
length
bytes from io
into a specified
buffer
(see IO::Buffer).
The length
argument is the “minimum length to be read”. If the
IO buffer size is 8KiB, but the
length
is 1024
(1KiB), up to 8KiB might be read,
but at least 1KiB will be. Generally, the only case where less data than
length
will be read is if there is an error reading the data.
Specifying a length
of 0 is valid and means try reading at
least once and return any available data.
Suggested implementation should try to read from io
in a
non-blocking manner and call io_wait if the
io
is not ready (which will yield control to other fibers).
See IO::Buffer for an interface available to return data.
Expected to return number of bytes read, or, in case of an error,
-errno
(negated number corresponding to system's error
code).
The method should be considered experimental.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_io_read(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by IO#wait, IO#wait_readable, IO#wait_writable to ask whether the
specified descriptor is ready for specified events within the specified
timeout
.
events
is a bit mask of IO::READABLE
,
IO::WRITABLE
, and IO::PRIORITY
.
Suggested implementation should register which Fiber is waiting for which resources and immediately calling Fiber.yield to pass control to other fibers. Then, in the close method, the scheduler might dispatch all the I/O resources to fibers waiting for it.
Expected to return the subset of events that are ready immediately.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_io_wait(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by IO#write to write
length
bytes to io
from from a specified
buffer
(see IO::Buffer).
The length
argument is the “(minimum) length to be written”.
If the IO buffer size is 8KiB, but the
length
specified is 1024 (1KiB), at most 8KiB will be written,
but at least 1KiB will be. Generally, the only case where less data than
length
will be written is if there is an error writing the
data.
Specifying a length
of 0 is valid and means try writing at
least once, as much data as possible.
Suggested implementation should try to write to io
in a
non-blocking manner and call io_wait if the
io
is not ready (which will yield control to other fibers).
See IO::Buffer for an interface available to get data from buffer efficiently.
Expected to return number of bytes written, or, in case of an error,
-errno
(negated number corresponding to system's error
code).
The method should be considered experimental.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_io_write(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by Kernel#sleep and Mutex#sleep and is expected to provide an implementation of sleeping in a non-blocking way. Implementation might register the current fiber in some list of “which fiber wait until what moment”, call Fiber.yield to pass control, and then in close resume the fibers whose wait period has elapsed.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_kernel_sleep(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by Process::Status.wait in order to wait for a specified process. See that method description for arguments description.
Suggested minimal implementation:
Thread.new do Process::Status.wait(pid, flags) end.value
This hook is optional: if it is not present in the current scheduler, Process::Status.wait will behave as a blocking method.
Expected to return a Process::Status instance.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_process_wait(VALUE self) { }
Invoked by Timeout.timeout to execute the given block
within
the given duration
. It can also be invoked directly by the
scheduler or user code.
Attempt to limit the execution time of a given block
to the
given duration
if possible. When a non-blocking operation
causes the block
's execution time to exceed the specified
duration
, that non-blocking operation should be interrupted by
raising the specified exception_class
constructed with the
given exception_arguments
.
General execution timeouts are often considered risky. This implementation will only interrupt non-blocking operations. This is by design because it's expected that non-blocking operations can fail for a variety of unpredictable reasons, so applications should already be robust in handling these conditions and by implication timeouts.
However, as a result of this design, if the block
does not
invoke any non-blocking operations, it will be impossible to interrupt it.
If you desire to provide predictable points for timeouts, consider adding
+sleep(0)+.
If the block is executed successfully, its result will be returned.
The exception will typically be raised using Fiber#raise.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_timeout_after(VALUE self) { }
Invoked to wake up Fiber previously blocked
with block (for
example, Mutex#lock calls block and Mutex#unlock
calls unblock). The
scheduler should use the fiber
parameter to understand which
fiber is unblocked.
blocker
is what was awaited for, but it is informational only
(for debugging and logging), and it is not guaranteed to be the same value
as the blocker
for block.
static VALUE rb_fiber_scheduler_interface_unblock(VALUE self) { }