[ruby-core:20794] [Bug #920] require is not thread-safe

Bug #920: require is not thread-safe
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/920

Author: Charles Nutter
Status: Open, Priority: Normal

Currently, two threads requiring the same file may see many different results. In some versions, the second thread will immediately return false, whether the require has completed or not. In other versions, the second thread will start its own load of the file in question, possibly redefining classes, modules, constants, and reinstantiating singletons. In some recent versions of 1.9, the second thread will block. We need a consistent fix for this across all production-ready Ruby versions.

If we agree that no require call should cause a given file to load twice, we have a few options:

* Modify all require implementations to immediately return false if the requested resource has already been loaded or is in the process of being loaded. This does not guarantee the file has *completed* loading, but would ensure we do not double-initialize anything in a required file. Along with this, we would simply advise all developers to avoid concurrent requires
* Modify all require implementations to use a global lock, disallowing concurrent requires entirely. This means required files must be well-behaved; they can't start up new threads that do requires or perform long-running tasks. It would fix the concurrency problem entirely and requires from multiple threads would simply happen in serial.

Both of these require behavioral changes in at least some Ruby versions, with the latter requiring the most drastic changes (since concurrent requires will no longer run in parallel, as they do now, even if no common resources are in contention).

A third option, having a per-resource lock, is infeasible due to the strong possibility of deadlocks. If two threads require separate files with circular dependencies, deadlock is almost assured. If this mechanism has been implemented in any versions of Ruby, it should be replaced with either of the two solutions above.


----------------------------------------
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org