From: Caleb Tennis <caleb@...>
Date: 2005-12-12T22:04:02+09:00
Subject: [ANN] - posixtimer 0.1


http://rubyforge.org/projects/posixtimer/

Here's my first RubyForge release, a small utility that wraps around the POSIX 
timer API.  This is only available for systems which implement timer_create() 
calls - Linux being where I've tested it on.

It's very simple: create a new timer, arm it, and after a certain number of 
seconds it will trigger a signal to your application:

timer = Posix::Timer.new
timer.arm(10.0)

# do some stuff for 10 seconds

10 seconds later => SignalException

You can specify a different signal than the default SIGALRM:

Posix::Timer.new("USR1")

or you can pass a block to the initializer and have it executed upon timeout:

a = Posix::Timer.new do
  puts "hi"
  raise MyCustomException
end

a.arm(10.0)

# 10 seconds later => MyCustomException


Other features:

a.disarm   # disarm the timer
a.armed? # true or false
a.timeout # return number of seconds until timer expires



#
# Caveats
#
#
# The Posix::Timer instance uses POSIX signals to trigger
# the timeouts.  This may conflict with other signals you wish to
# use in your application.
#
# Passing a block to the constructor will perform a Signal.trap on
# the signal.  This may override an existing Signal.trap.  In a future
# version I intend to rollback the previous trap context.
#
# Multiple timers using the same signal may conflict.