concurrent-ruby 0.0.1 → 0.1.0

data/md/goroutine.md

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+# Go, Go, Gadget Goroutine!
+
+A goroutine is the simplest of the concurrency utilities in this library. It is inspired by
+[Go's](http://golang.org/) [goroutines](https://gobyexample.com/goroutines) and
+[Erlang's](http://www.erlang.org/) [spawn](http://erlangexamples.com/tag/spawn/) keyword. The
+`go` function is nothing more than a simple way to send a block to the global thread pool (see below)
+for processing.
+
+## Examples
+
+```ruby
+require 'concurrent'
+
+@expected = nil
+
+go(1, 2, 3){|a, b, c| sleep(1); @expected = [c, b, a] }
+
+sleep(0.1)
+@expected #=> nil
+
+sleep(2)
+@expected #=> [3, 2, 1]
+```
+
+## Copyright
+
+*Concurrent Ruby* is Copyright © 2013 [Jerry D'Antonio](https://twitter.com/jerrydantonio).
+It is free software and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.
+
+## License
+
+Released under the MIT license.
+
+http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php  
+
+> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy  
+> of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal  
+> in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights  
+> to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell  
+> copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is  
+> furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:  
+> 
+> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in  
+> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.  
+> 
+> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR  
+> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  
+> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE  
+> AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER  
+> LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,  
+> OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN  
+> THE SOFTWARE.  

data/md/obligation.md

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+# Obligation
+
+TBD...
+
+## Copyright
+
+*Concurrent Ruby* is Copyright © 2013 [Jerry D'Antonio](https://twitter.com/jerrydantonio).
+It is free software and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.
+
+## License
+
+Released under the MIT license.
+
+http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php  
+
+> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy  
+> of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal  
+> in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights  
+> to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell  
+> copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is  
+> furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:  
+> 
+> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in  
+> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.  
+> 
+> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR  
+> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  
+> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE  
+> AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER  
+> LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,  
+> OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN  
+> THE SOFTWARE.  

data/md/promise.md

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+# Promises, Promises...
+
+A promise is the most powerful and versatile of the concurrency objects in this library.
+Promises are inspired by the JavaScript [Promises/A](http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Promises/A)
+and [Promises/A+](http://promises-aplus.github.io/promises-spec/) specifications.
+
+> A promise represents the eventual value returned from the single completion of an operation.
+
+Promises are similar to futures and share many of the same behaviours. Promises are far more robust,
+however. Promises can be chained in a tree structure where each promise may have zero or more children.
+Promises are chained using the `then` method. The result of a call to `then` is always another promise.
+Promises are resolved asynchronously in the order they are added to the tree. Parents are guaranteed
+to be resolved before their children. The result of each promise is passed to each of its children
+upon resolution. When a promise is rejected all its children will be summarily rejected.
+
+Promises have three possible states: *pending*, *rejected*, and *fulfilled*. When a promise is created it is set
+to *pending* and will remain in that state until processing is complete. A completed promise is either *rejected*,
+indicating that an exception was thrown during processing, or *fulfilled*, indicating succedd. If a promise is
+*fulfilled* its `value` will be updated to reflect the result of the operation. If *rejected* the `reason` will
+be updated with a reference to the thrown exception. The predicate methods `pending?`, `rejected`, and `fulfilled?`
+can be called at any time to obtain the state of the promise, as can the `state` method, which returns a symbol.
+
+Retrieving the value of a promise is done through the `value` (alias: `deref`) method. Obtaining the value of
+a promise is a potentially blocking operation. When a promise is *rejected* a call to `value` will return `nil`
+immediately. When a promise is *fulfilled* a call to `value` will immediately return the current value.
+When a promise is *pending* a call to `value` will block until the promise is either *rejected* or *fulfilled*.
+A *timeout* value can be passed to `value` to limit how long the call will block. If `nil` the call will
+block indefinitely. If `0` the call will not block. Any other integer or float value will indicate the
+maximum number of seconds to block.
+
+## Examples
+
+Start by requiring promises
+
+```ruby
+require 'concurrent'
+```
+
+Then create one
+
+```ruby
+p = Promise.new("Jerry", "D'Antonio") do |first, last|
+      "#{last}, #{first}"
+    end
+
+# -or-
+
+p = promise(10){|x| x * x * x }
+```
+
+Promises can be chained using the `then` method. The `then` method
+accepts a block but no arguments. The result of the each promise is
+passed as the block argument to chained promises
+
+```ruby
+p = promise(10){|x| x * 2}.then{|result| result - 10 }
+```
+
+And so on, and so on, and so on...
+
+```ruby
+p = promise(10){|x| x * 2}.
+    then{|result| result - 10 }.
+    then{|result| result * 3 }.
+    then{|result| result % 5 }
+```
+
+Promises are executed asynchronously so a newly-created promise *should* always be in the pending state
+
+
+```ruby
+p = promise{ "Hello, world!" }
+p.state   #=> :pending
+p.pending? #=> true
+```
+
+Wait a little bit, and the promise will resolve and provide a value
+
+```ruby
+p = promise{ "Hello, world!" }
+sleep(0.1)
+
+p.state      #=> :fulfilled
+p.fulfilled? #=> true
+
+p.value      #=> "Hello, world!"
+
+```
+
+If an exception occurs, the promise will be rejected and will provide
+a reason for the rejection
+
+```ruby
+p = promise{ raise StandardError.new("Here comes the Boom!") }
+sleep(0.1)
+
+p.state     #=> :rejected
+p.rejected? #=> true
+
+p.reason=>  #=> "#<StandardError: Here comes the Boom!>"
+```
+
+### Rejection
+
+Much like the economy, rejection exhibits a trickle-down effect. When
+a promise is rejected all its children will be rejected
+
+```ruby
+p = [ promise{ Thread.pass; raise StandardError } ]
+
+10.times{|i| p << p.first.then{ i } }
+sleep(0.1)
+
+p.length      #=> 11
+p.first.state #=> :rejected
+p.last.state  #=> :rejected
+```
+
+Once a promise is rejected it will not accept any children. Calls
+to `then` will continually return `self`
+
+```ruby
+p = promise{ raise StandardError }
+sleep(0.1)
+
+p.object_id        #=> 32960556
+p.then{}.object_id #=> 32960556
+p.then{}.object_id #=> 32960556
+```
+
+### Error Handling
+
+Promises support error handling callbacks is a style mimicing Ruby's
+own exception handling mechanism, namely `rescue`
+
+
+```ruby
+promise{ "dangerous operation..." }.rescue{|ex| puts "Bam!" }
+
+# -or- (for the Java/C# crowd)
+promise{ "dangerous operation..." }.catch{|ex| puts "Boom!" }
+
+# -or- (for the hipsters)
+promise{ "dangerous operation..." }.on_error{|ex| puts "Pow!" }
+```
+
+As with Ruby's `rescue` mechanism, a promise's `rescue` method can
+accept an optional Exception class argument (defaults to `Exception`
+when not specified)
+
+
+```ruby
+promise{ "dangerous operation..." }.rescue(ArgumentError){|ex| puts "Bam!" }
+```
+
+Calls to `rescue` can also be chained
+
+```ruby
+promise{ "dangerous operation..." }.
+  rescue(ArgumentError){|ex| puts "Bam!" }.
+  rescue(NoMethodError){|ex| puts "Boom!" }.
+  rescue(StandardError){|ex| puts "Pow!" }
+```
+
+When there are multiple `rescue` handlers the first one to match the thrown
+exception will be triggered
+
+```ruby
+promise{ raise NoMethodError }.
+  rescue(ArgumentError){|ex| puts "Bam!" }.
+  rescue(NoMethodError){|ex| puts "Boom!" }.
+  rescue(StandardError){|ex| puts "Pow!" }
+
+sleep(0.1)
+
+#=> Boom!
+```
+
+Trickle-down rejection also applies to rescue handlers. When a promise is rejected,
+for any reason, its rescue handlers will be triggered. Rejection of the parent counts.
+
+```ruby
+promise{ Thread.pass; raise StandardError }.
+  then{ true }.rescue{ puts 'Boom!' }.
+  then{ true }.rescue{ puts 'Boom!' }.
+  then{ true }.rescue{ puts 'Boom!' }.
+  then{ true }.rescue{ puts 'Boom!' }.
+  then{ true }.rescue{ puts 'Boom!' }
+sleep(0.1)
+
+#=> Boom!
+#=> Boom!
+#=> Boom!
+#=> Boom!
+#=> Boom!
+```
+
+## Copyright
+
+*Concurrent Ruby* is Copyright &copy; 2013 [Jerry D'Antonio](https://twitter.com/jerrydantonio).
+It is free software and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.
+
+## License
+
+Released under the MIT license.
+
+http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php  
+
+> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy  
+> of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal  
+> in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights  
+> to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell  
+> copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is  
+> furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:  
+> 
+> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in  
+> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.  
+> 
+> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR  
+> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  
+> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE  
+> AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER  
+> LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,  
+> OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN  
+> THE SOFTWARE.  

data/md/thread_pool.md

@@ -0,0 +1,197 @@
+# We're Going to Need a Bigger Boat
+
+Thread pools are neither a new idea nor an implementation of the actor pattern. Nevertheless, thread
+pools are still an extremely relevant concurrency tool. Every time a thread is created then
+subsequently destroyed there is overhead. Creating a pool of reusable worker threads then repeatedly'
+dipping into the pool can have huge performace benefits for a long-running application like a service.
+Ruby's blocks provide an excellent mechanism for passing a generic work request to a thread, making
+Ruby an excellent candidate language for thread pools.
+
+The inspiration for thread pools in this library is Java's `java.util.concurrent` implementation of
+[thread pools](java.util.concurrent). The `java.util.concurrent` library is a well-designed, stable,
+scalable, and battle-tested concurrency library. It provides three different implementations of thread
+pools. One of those implementations is simply a special case of the first and doesn't offer much
+advantage in Ruby, so only the first two (`FixedThreadPool` and `CachedThreadPool`) are implemented here.
+
+Thread pools share common `behavior` defined by `:thread_pool`. The most imortant method is `post`
+(aliased with the left-shift operator `<<`). The `post` method sends a block to the pool for future
+processing.
+
+A running thread pool can be shutdown in an orderly or disruptive manner. Once a thread pool has been
+shutdown in cannot be started again. The `shutdown` method can be used to initiate an orderly shutdown
+of the thread pool. All new `post` calls will reject the given block and immediately return `false`.
+Threads in the pool will continue to process all in-progress work and will process all tasks still in
+the queue. The `kill` method can be used to immediately shutdown the pool. All new `post` calls will
+reject the given block and immediately return `false`. Ruby's `Thread.kill` will be called on all threads
+in the pool, aborting all in-progress work. Tasks in the queue will be discarded.
+
+A client thread can choose to block and wait for pool shutdown to complete. This is useful when shutting
+down an application and ensuring the app doesn't exit before pool processing is complete. The method
+`wait_for_termination` will block for a maximum of the given number of seconds then return `true` if
+shutdown completed successfully or `false`. When the timeout value is `nil` the call will block
+indefinitely. Calling `wait_for_termination` on a stopped thread pool will immediately return `true`.
+
+Predicate methods are provided to describe the current state of the thread pool. Provided methods are
+`running?`, `shutdown?`, and `killed?`. The `shutdown` method will return true regardless of whether
+the pool was shutdown wil `shutdown` or `kill`.
+
+## FixedThreadPool
+
+From the docs:
+
+> Creates a thread pool that reuses a fixed number of threads operating off a shared unbounded queue.
+> At any point, at most `nThreads` threads will be active processing tasks. If additional tasks are submitted
+> when all threads are active, they will wait in the queue until a thread is available. If any thread terminates
+> due to a failure during execution prior to shutdown, a new one will take its place if needed to execute
+> subsequent tasks. The threads in the pool will exist until it is explicitly `shutdown`.
+
+### Examples
+
+```ruby
+require 'concurrent'
+
+pool = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(5)
+
+pool.size     #=> 5
+pool.running? #=> true
+pool.status   #=> ["sleep", "sleep", "sleep", "sleep", "sleep"]
+
+pool.post(1,2,3){|*args| sleep(10) }
+pool << proc{ sleep(10) }
+pool.size     #=> 5
+
+sleep(11)
+pool.status   #=> ["sleep", "sleep", "sleep", "sleep", "sleep"]
+
+pool.shutdown #=> :shuttingdown
+pool.status   #=> []
+pool.wait_for_termination
+
+pool.size      #=> 0
+pool.status    #=> []
+pool.shutdown? #=> true
+```
+
+## CachedThreadPool
+
+From the docs:
+
+> Creates a thread pool that creates new threads as needed, but will reuse previously constructed threads when
+> they are available. These pools will typically improve the performance of programs that execute many short-lived
+> asynchronous tasks. Calls to [`post`] will reuse previously constructed threads if available. If no existing
+> thread is available, a new thread will be created and added to the pool. Threads that have not been used for
+> sixty seconds are terminated and removed from the cache. Thus, a pool that remains idle for long enough will
+> not consume any resources. Note that pools with similar properties but different details (for example,
+> timeout parameters) may be created using [`CachedThreadPool`] constructors.
+
+### Examples
+
+```ruby
+require 'functional/cached_thread_pool'
+# or
+require 'functional/concurrency'
+
+pool = Concurrent::CachedThreadPool.new
+
+pool.size     #=> 0
+pool.running? #=> true
+pool.status   #=> []
+
+pool.post(1,2,3){|*args| sleep(10) }
+pool << proc{ sleep(10) }
+pool.size     #=> 2
+pool.status   #=> [[:working, nil, "sleep"], [:working, nil, "sleep"]]
+
+sleep(11)
+pool.status   #=> [[:idle, 23, "sleep"], [:idle, 23, "sleep"]]
+
+sleep(60)
+pool.size     #=> 0
+pool.status   #=> []
+
+pool.shutdown #=> :shuttingdown
+pool.status   #=> []
+pool.wait_for_termination
+
+pool.size      #=> 0
+pool.status    #=> []
+pool.shutdown? #=> true
+```
+
+## Global Thread Pool
+
+For efficiency, of the aforementioned concurrency methods (agents, futures, promises, and
+goroutines) run against a global thread pool. This pool can be directly accessed through the
+`$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL` global variable. Generally, this pool should not be directly accessed.
+Use the other concurrency features instead.
+
+By default the global thread pool is a `CachedThreadPool`. This means it consumes no resources
+unless concurrency functions are called. Most of the time this pool can simply be left alone.
+
+### Changing the Global Thread Pool
+
+It is possible to change the global thread pool. Simply assign a new pool to the `$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL`
+variable:
+
+```ruby
+$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(10)
+```
+
+Ideally this should be done at application startup, before any concurrency functions are called.
+If the circumstances warrant the global thread pool can be changed at runtime. Just make sure to
+shutdown the old global thread pool so that no tasks are lost:
+
+```ruby
+$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(10)
+
+# do stuff...
+
+old_global_pool = $GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL
+$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL = Concurrent::FixedThreadPool.new(10)
+old_global_pool.shutdown
+```
+
+### EventMachine
+
+The [EventMachine](http://rubyeventmachine.com/) library (source [online](https://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine))
+is an awesome library for creating evented applications. EventMachine provides its own thread pool
+and the authors recommend using their pool rather than using Ruby's `Thread`. No sweat,
+`functional-ruby` is fully compatible with EventMachine. Simple require `eventmachine`
+*before* requiring `functional-ruby` then replace the global thread pool with an instance
+of `EventMachineDeferProxy`:
+
+```ruby
+require 'eventmachine' # do this FIRST
+require 'functional/concurrency'
+
+$GLOBAL_THREAD_POOL = EventMachineDeferProxy.new
+```
+
+## Copyright
+
+*Concurrent Ruby* is Copyright &copy; 2013 [Jerry D'Antonio](https://twitter.com/jerrydantonio).
+It is free software and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.
+
+## License
+
+Released under the MIT license.
+
+http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php  
+
+> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy  
+> of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal  
+> in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights  
+> to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell  
+> copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is  
+> furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:  
+> 
+> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in  
+> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.  
+> 
+> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR  
+> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  
+> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE  
+> AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER  
+> LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,  
+> OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN  
+> THE SOFTWARE.