Concurrent code in Ruby 1.8.6 through inlining

vosechu@create-on.com (Chuck Vose) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:11:00 -0600

Slight typo in the code fixed: 2008-01-08

Toshiyuki and I have released a new gem called rbridge which allows us to execute functional, side-effect free, concurrent code directly in Ruby regardless of the version by using Erlang as a processor. This includes using the Mnesia distributed database and ETS/DETS.

To try it out please follow these steps:

1. Download Erlang for your os. Windows has binaries and OS X can be configured with `./configure—prefix=/opt/local` to make MacParts happy. I haven’t yet tried it with Linux but the default configure options should be okay.

2. Download the rbridge gem. `sudo gem install rbridge`

3. Start the rulang server in Erlang on port 9900. Change dir to the gem directory which is usually /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rbridge-0.1/lib and run sudo erlc rulang.erl. Enter the Erlang shell by typing erl. Finally, start the server with rulang:start_server(9900). (There’s a dot at the end of the command).

4. Require rubygems and rbridge in your code and create a new connection to the rulang server. This is the simplest bit of inline code I can think of but there is a lot more we can do: asynchronous access and ruby-style syntax specifically.

require 'rubygems'
require 'rbridge'

@r = RBridge.new(nil, 'localhost', 9900)

puts @r.erl('10*10.')

To read more check out the documentation on ruby-mnesia.rubyforge.org.

Aside: Toshiyuki Hirooka found me. Thank you to everyone that helped search and offered to translate for us. I’m constantly impressed by the support from the Ruby community.

The Vose Way: Concurrent code in Ruby 1.8.6 through inlining

Concurrent code in Ruby 1.8.6 through inlining