zmqmachine

by Chuck Remes
http://github.com/chuckremes/zmqmachine

DESCRIPTION:

ZMQMachine is another Ruby implementation of the reactor pattern but this time using 0mq sockets rather than POSIX sockets.

Unlike the great Eventmachine ruby project and the Python Twisted project which work with POSIX sockets, ZMQMachine is inherently threaded. The 0mq sockets backing the reactor use a thread pool for performing their work so already it is different from most other reactors. Also, a single program may create multiple reactor instances which runs in its own thread. All activity within the reactor is single-threaded and asynchronous.

It is possible to extend the 0mq library to “poll” normal file descriptors. This isn’t on my roadmap but patches are accepted.

FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

  • Very few specs.

  • Documentation is limited. I need to write up a lot more detail on the Handler classes passed to socket instances and how this differs from the Eventmachine way.

  • Exceptions and error codes haven’t really been implemented yet.

  • Some classes are just skeletons.

  • Recommended for JRuby or Rubinius since they are the only existing runtimes that use native threads without a GIL. MRI 1.9.x is okay but may have threading problems. This hasn’t been tested with MacRuby.

SYNOPSIS:

Read and execute the examples in the examples directory.

REQUIREMENTS:

Requires the 0mq library

  • 0mq 2.1.x, 3.0 and later

Depends on 2 external gems.

  • ffi-rzmq (>= 0.9.0)

  • ffi (>= 1.0.0) [MRI only]

INSTALL:

Make sure the 0MQ library is already installed on your system. Secondly, verify the ffi-rzmq gem is installed (available from rubygems.org).

Lastly, install the zmqmachine gem from rubygems.org. Alternately, build and install directly from a cloned git repository.

% git clone github.com/chuckremes/zmqmachine.git
% cd zmqmachine
% gem build zmqmachine.gemspec
% gem install zmqmachine-*.gem

LICENSE:

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2010 Chuck Remes

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.