rubinius - improving the rails ecosystem
DESCRIPTION
A talk on Rubinius at RailsConf Europe 2007.TRANSCRIPT
Improving the Rails ecosystem
The Rubinius Virtual Machine
1
Thanks EY!
2
Be thinking of questions
a_better_ruby==
a_better_rails
# => true
Brand new code base
Write in ruby first.Then C if you have to.
If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen
A work in progrees
Nov. 3: 1.0 previewEnd of 07: 1.0
You’re the customer
Help me help you.
Tell me your pain.
Some current pain
Memory usage
Memory
• 1.8 garbage collector is simple, but too simple.
• Rubinius uses modern techniques to decrease memory usage and increase throughput
15
Memory
The forking problem
Memory
• Start up a mongrel.
• Require all your code.
• fork() the process.
• Watch your memory double.
17
In 1.8...
Memory
• Start up a mongrel.
• Require all your code.
• fork() the process.
• Watch NO change in the memory footprint!
18
In Rubinius...
Memory
19
1 2 3 4
1.8 rubinius
Memory change peradditional mongrel instance
Packaging / Deployment
.rba == .jar.rba == .war
Packaging
• Precompiled code (.rbc)
• Meta data about project
• RDoc
• Assets
22
Packaging
Performance
Built for change
Performance
Modern Techniques
• Inline caching
• Pre-compiled code
• JIT (eventually)
25
Performance
26
3 legged dog turtles space shuttle rubinius
Performance
Error reporting
28
Normal Backtraces
An exception has occurred: User requested termination with Control-C (Interrupt)
Backtrace: Readline.readline at kernel/core/readline.rb:52 main.__script__ at lib/bin/sirb.rb:78 main.load at kernel/core/compile.rb:78 main.require at kernel/core/compile.rb:129 Array#each at kernel/core/array.rb:526 Integer(Fixnum)#times at kernel/core/integer.rb:19 Array#each at kernel/core/array.rb:526 main.require at kernel/core/compile.rb:112 Array#each at kernel/core/array.rb:526 Integer(Fixnum)#times at kernel/core/integer.rb:19 Array#each at kernel/core/array.rb:526 main.require at kernel/core/compile.rb:111 main.__script__ at kernel/loader.rb:159
Reporting
C extensions can misbehave
Reporting
Reporting
Segfault detected in function 0x90a00 (accessing 0x4) (MemorySegmentionError)
SomeExtension#test_segfault at extensions/test/test.c main.__script__ at extensions/test/test.rb:38 main.load at kernel/core/compile.rb:95 main.__script__ at kernel/loader.rb:122
VALUE test_segfault(VALUE self) { // Get a pointer to address 4. char *i = (char*)4; // Attempt to read from address 4 // which is definitely not allowed. x = *i; // Never get this far. return Qnil;}
Raises an exception!
31
Time lost to segfaults
50
100
150
200
1 3 5
2 6 10
30
70
200
1.8 rubinius
(in minutes)
Profiling
In 1.8...
• Profiling is instrumented only.
• The speed hit is prohibitive for running in production mode
33
Profiling
In Rubinius...
• Sampling profiler available always
• Has little to no impact on performance
34
Profiling
35
require ‘simple_profile’
profile(:profile1) do obj.run_slow_methodend
shell# rbx profiler --analyze profile1.results
Profiling
In my_app.rb
36
require ‘simple_profile’
SimpleProfiler.profile_actionsSimpleProfiler.profile_views
shell# rbx profiler --analyze actions.resultsshell# rbx profiler --analyze views.results
In environment.rb
Profiling
Disclaimer
• All statements and numbers and opinions are only those of Evan Phoenix.
• All statistics are made up, but represent a general trend.
38
