From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2010-01-10T23:04:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Non-blocking communication between Ruby processes

2010/1/9 Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@aliax.net>:
> El Jueves, 7 de Enero de 2010, Robert Klemme escribió:
>
>> I'd personally prefer to use the DRb approach because then you can
>> actually send typed messages, i.e. whatever information you need.  Also,
>> it was fun to play around with those small test programs. ;-)  And you
>> can have the reader run on any machine in the network.
>
> Hi Robert, I'd like to thank you the help you gave me in this and other
> threads. Finally I've decided to use posix message queue [*] under Ruby.

You're welcome!

> The reason is that it allows safely multiple processes or threads using the
> same mqueue to write message (atomic strings) and also having multiple
> processes reading from the same mqueue which means load-balancing out of the
> box :)
>
> The queue size is configurable and the writer/reader can write/read in the
> mqueue in a blocking or non blocking way.
>
> Also, mqueues allow setting a priority to the messages so those messages with
> higher priority are fetched first when reading the mqueue.
>
> Posix message queues are just 20-40% slower than pipes in my benchmarks (but
> pipes are no multiprocess/thread safe).

That sounds good!  I have never worked with POSIX MQ so I definitively
learned something new as well.

> I would like to share a working example:

Thank you for the summary and the code!  That way other readers will
benefit as well.

> I also tested your suggested solution with DRb with is really nice, but I
> don't need all the features DRb provides (I just need to pass a simple string
> to other process(es) from multiple workers).

Well, you don't have to use them. :-)  But POSIX MQ looks equally simple to use.

Kind regards

robert

-- 
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