rbs_parser VS Polyphony

We discovered a bug in `srb init` for Ruby 3.1 recently that a teammate of mine is working on fixing at the moment. It's likely that if you tried again in a few days it'll have been fixed. Sorry about that, totally agree that the out-of-box experience should just work.

I wrote up an FAQ about the state of Ruby 3 and RBS here:

https://sorbet.org/docs/faq#when-ruby-3-gets-types-what-will...

The tl;dr is that RBI files (not RBS files) will probably always be the preferred way to declare types for third party code (because it will always support exactly the same set of features that Sorbet does). We have some people in the community look into teaching Sorbet to read the RBS format, but the existing parsers for RBS files are written in Ruby and are very slow, and there are some ambiguities in the spec that make writing a third party parser that compiles to native code tricky. You can see an attempt to write a fast RBS parser in C++ here[1], but again given that RBI files do everything we need them to right now and we have other features people are asking us for, we haven't prioritized RBS support incredibly highly.

Sorbet works completely fine without RBS files!

[1] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

This article might help clear some things up:

https://sorbet.org/blog/2020/07/30/ruby-3-rbs-sorbet

tl;dr:

- RBS files are what Ruby 3 uses to describe types in separate files

- RBI files are what Sorbet uses to describe types in separate files

- Sorbet invented its RBI file syntax before RBS files existed. RBI files use the same syntax for types and signatures as in type annotations that live inside `*.rb` source code with Sorbet.

- We've been meaning to add support to Sorbet to consume both RBI files and RBS files, but we haven't had a chance to get around to it.

If someone beat us to it and implemented support for RBS files in Sorbet that would be amazing! Shopify took an early stab at implementing an RBS parser in C++ for performance[1], but I'm not sure what the status of it is today.

[1] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

(disclaimer: I work on the Sorbet team)

I think I understand GP's motivation: RBI files and RBS files are two different formats, and as a user of the language, people tend to want to use the officially blessed solution the language provides.

In case you weren't aware, parlour[1] is a popular open source project for working with RBI files. I believe it supports transparently converting between RBI files (Sorbet) and RBS files (Ruby 3).

There is also rbs_parser[2], a C++ parser for RBS files to convert them to RBI files, written by Shopify, a major user of Sorbet.

Stepping back: I haven't personally read many complaints from Sorbet users describing how the current state of RBI/RBS interop gets in the way of what they can actually do with Sorbet. Almost all the feature requests we get about Sorbet (both inside Stripe and outside) are for fixing bugs or implementing new language-level features. RBI files as implemented seem to work.

Sorbet already has an extensive set of RBI files covering the Ruby standard library (at least as good or better to my knowledge than any existing repository of types for RBS files), and there are plentiful tools for working with RBI files, listed here.[3]

If lack of first-party RBS support in Sorbet is holding you back from trying Sorbet, I'd strongly encourage you to give Sorbet a try anyways! Many people have shared great experiences adopting Sorbet in their Ruby codebases.

[1] https://github.com/AaronC81/parlour

[2] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

[3] https://sorbet.org/en/community

When using green threads/fibers/coroutines, an interesting technique to make signal handling safer is to run the signal handler asynchronously on a separate fiber/green thread. That way most of the problems of dealing with signals go away, and there's basically no limitation on what you can do inside the signal handler.

I've successfully used this technique in Polyphony [1], a fiber-based Ruby gem for writing concurrent programs. When a signal occurs, Polyphony creates a special-purpose fiber that runs the signal handling code. The fiber is put at the head of the run queue, and is resumed once the currently executed fiber yields control.

[1] https://github.com/digital-fabric/polyphony

Read the release notes here: https://github.com/orgs/digital-fabric/discussions/110 The Polyphony docs: https://www.rubydoc.info/gems/polyphony The Polyphony repository: https://github.com/digital-fabric/polyphony

Polyphony is a gem for building highly-concurrent Ruby programs. It utilizes Ruby fibers to provide a high-performance safe environment for launching any number of concurrent operations. Under the hood, Polyphony employs io_uring to maximize I/O performance (libev is used on platforms other than recent Linux kernels).

Is monkey-patching inherently bad? Should its use make Polyphony illegitimate? These are the questions I'm exploring in my latest article.

how is this diff from: https://github.com/digital-fabric/polyphony

Infinite loops are great for expressing long-running concurrent operations. In this article I’ll discuss the use of infinite loops as a major construct when writing concurrent apps in Ruby using Polyphony. I’ll show how infinite loops differ from normal, finite ones; how they can be used to express long-running tasks in a concurrent environment; and how they can be stopped. Read it now!

Polyphony is a library for writing highly concurrent Ruby apps. Polyphony harnesses Ruby fibers and a powerful io_uring-based I/O runtime to provide a solid foundation for building high-performance concurrent Ruby apps.

> Curious if there’s anything public about improving ruby performance from the I/O angle mentioned in the post.

I'm currently working on Polyphony [0], a Ruby gem for writing highly-concurrent Ruby apps. It uses Ruby fibers under the hood, and does I/O using io_uring (on Linux, there is also a libev-based backend).

[0] https://github.com/digital-fabric/polyphony