From: Olivier Mascia <om-lists@...>
Date: 2005-08-24T15:54:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Embedding ruby in a multi-threaded host application

Le 23-ao�t-05 � 14:24, Olivier Mascia a �crit :

> I would like to host ruby interpreter in an application to bring in  
> a superb scripting language to the app. Though I read that now the  
> interpreter makes use of global variables for its own state,  
> excluding it from being hosted in a multi-threaded application  
> which cannot afford a total mutual exclusion of all its threads  
> when calling the interpreter. In this application, dedicating a  
> single thread to ruby and having other worker threads queue  
> themselves for access to the single thread hosting ruby is not  
> possible too.
>
> The application would need multiple of its threads to have access  
> to a private instance of the whole interpreter, with complete state  
> separation between all these instances.
>
> Has someone more information on the ruby's developers goal  
> regarding this?  Is this something being considered?  Is this being  
> worked on? Planned for a future release?  For *the* next release?

Hmm. I could not find evidence that this is being worked on, nor even  
that this is something really considered for the future (reasonable  
future - not in 2 years).

I think it will be probably wiser for me to adopt Lua instead of Ruby  
at least on this project, even though of course both beasts aren't  
equivalent and even though I had an irrational personal preference to  
use Ruby. Lua seems to fit the embedding need perfectly : it has been  
designed for that.

-- 
Olivier Mascia