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Rationale, implementation and known bugs are documented in DESIGN.md but the elevator pitch is that Ruby and V8 don't like sharing the same system stack. mini_racer_extension.cc has been split into mini_racer_extension.c and mini_racer_v8.cc. The former deals with Ruby, the latter with JS. This work has been sponsored by Discourse.
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rationale | ||
========= | ||
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Before the commit that added this document, Ruby and V8 shared the same system | ||
stack but it's been observed that they don't always co-exist peacefully there. | ||
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Symptoms range from unexpected JS stack overflow exceptions and hitting debug | ||
checks in V8, to outright segmentation faults. | ||
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To mitigate that, V8 runs on separate threads now. | ||
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implementation | ||
============== | ||
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Each `MiniRacer::Context` is paired with a native system thread that runs V8. | ||
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Multiple Ruby threads can concurrently access the `MiniRacer::Context`. | ||
MiniRacer ensures mutual exclusion. Ruby threads won't trample each other. | ||
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Ruby threads communicate with the V8 thread through a mutex-and-condition-variable | ||
protected request/response memory buffer. | ||
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The wire format is V8's native (de)serialization format. An encoder/decoder | ||
has been added to MiniRacer. | ||
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Requests and (some) responses are prefixed with a single character | ||
that indicates the desired action: `'C'` is `context.call(...)`, | ||
`'E'` is `context.eval(...)`, and so on. | ||
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A response from the V8 thread either starts with: | ||
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- `'\xff'`, indicating a normal response that should be deserialized as-is | ||
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- `'c'`, signaling an in-band request (not a response!) to call a Ruby function | ||
registered with `context.attach(...)`. In turn, the Ruby thread replies with | ||
a `'c'` response containing the return value from the Ruby function. | ||
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Special care has been taken to ensure Ruby and JS functions can call each other | ||
recursively without deadlocking. The Ruby thread uses a recursive mutex that | ||
excludes other Ruby threads but still allows reentrancy from the same thread. | ||
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The exact request and response payloads are documented in the source code but | ||
they are almost universally: | ||
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- either a single value (e.g. `true` or `false`), or | ||
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- a two or three element array (ex. `[filename, source]` for `context.eval(...)`), or | ||
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- for responses, an errback-style `[response, error]` array, where `error` | ||
is a multi-line string that contains the error message on the first line, | ||
and, optionally, the stack trace. If not empty, the error string is turned | ||
into a Ruby exception and raised. | ||
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deliberate changes & known bugs | ||
=============================== | ||
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- `MiniRacer::Platform.set_flags! :single_threaded` still runs everything on | ||
the same thread but is prone to crashes in Ruby < 3.4.0 due to a Ruby runtime | ||
bug that clobbers thread-local variables. | ||
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- The `Isolate` class is gone. Maintaining a one-to-many relationship between | ||
isolates and contexts in a multi-threaded environment had a bad cost/benefit | ||
ratio. `Isolate` methods like `isolate.low_memory_notification` have been | ||
moved to `Context`, ex., `context.low_memory_notification`. | ||
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- The `marshal_stack_depth` argument is still accepted but ignored; it's no | ||
longer necessary. | ||
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- The `ensure_gc_after_idle` argument is a no-op in `:single_threaded` mode. | ||
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- The `timeout` argument no longer interrupts long-running Ruby code. Killing | ||
or interrupting a Ruby thread executing arbitrary code is fraught with peril. | ||
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- Returning an invalid JS `Date` object (think `new Date(NaN)`) now raises a | ||
`RangeError` instead of silently returning a bogus `Time` object. | ||
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- Not all JS objects map 1-to-1 to Ruby objects. Typed arrays and arraybuffers | ||
are currently mapped to `Encoding::ASCII_8BIT`strings as the closest Ruby | ||
equivalent to a byte buffer. | ||
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- Not all JS objects are serializable/cloneable. Where possible, such objects | ||
are substituted with a cloneable representation, else a `MiniRacer::RuntimeError` | ||
is raised. | ||
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Promises, argument objects, map and set iterators, etc., are substituted, | ||
either with an empty object (promises, argument objects), or by turning them | ||
into arrays (map/set iterators.) | ||
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Function objects are substituted with a marker so they can be represented | ||
as `MiniRacer::JavaScriptFunction` objects on the Ruby side. | ||
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SharedArrayBuffers are not cloneable by design but aren't really usable in | ||
`mini_racer` in the first place (no way to share them between isolates.) |
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