From: Dossy <dossy@...>
Date: 2002-05-09T11:54:40+09:00
Subject: Thread#join doesn't accept a timeout?

Hi,

In trying to port JUnitPerf (which supplies nice test
decorators for TimedTest and such) to Test::Unit for Ruby,
I realized that Thread#join takes no args, unlike Java
where you can optionally pass a timeout.

I hacked around it like so:

  timeout = 3 # seconds
  rd, wr = IO.pipe
  t = Thread.new do
    # do some stuff
    wr.write "done"
    wr.close
  end
  selected = select([rd], nil, nil, timeout)
  if selected.nil? or selected[0].size == 0
    t.kill
  end
  rd.close
  t.join

This "works" but I'm not confident this is the best
way of doing it.  I also noticed that there's no
Kernel#alarm ... you can Kernel#trap SIGALRM, but
there's no way to set an alarm in Ruby (that I can
see) without using Kernel#syscall or a native .so.

Ideally, Thread#join would look something like this:

  def join(timeout = nil)
    ...
  end

timeout = nil means wait forever, timeout = 0 means
don't wait, and timeout >0 means wait that many
milliseconds.

Also, is there any interest in my Test::Unit::TimedTestCase?

-- Dossy

-- 
Dossy Shiobara                       mail: dossy@panoptic.com 
Panoptic Computer Network             web: http://www.panoptic.com/ 
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)