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Feature #14123

closed

Kernel#pp by default

Added by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago. Updated over 6 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Target version:
[ruby-core:83850]

Description

Matz, may I commit this? I really want this.

diff --git a/prelude.rb b/prelude.rb
index 7b98e28285..87f49ac9fb 100644
--- a/prelude.rb
+++ b/prelude.rb
@@ -141,3 +141,11 @@ def irb
     irb
   end
 end
+
+module Kernel
+  def pp(*objs)
+    undef :pp
+    require 'pp'
+    pp(*objs)
+  end
+end

Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago

Brief background: I talked about pp with some people at RubyConf, and all people are tired of writing require "pp". And then, we reached this simple solution. Note that we already have a similar trick, as Binding#irb, though I'm unsure if it is officially accepted or not.

Updated by hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA) over 6 years ago

+1

I sometimes get undefined method `pp' for main:Object (NoMethodError) error when I did debug my script. It's useful for me.

Updated by jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) over 6 years ago

I'm not opposed to this feature, but the proposed implementation is not thread-safe, and also breaks when running ruby chrooted. If Kernel#pp is implemented, I request the implementation be thread-safe and that it fall back to Kernel#p if requiring pp fails.

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) wrote:

I'm not opposed to this feature, but the proposed implementation is not thread-safe, and also breaks when running ruby chrooted. If Kernel#pp is implemented, I request the implementation be thread-safe and that it fall back to Kernel#p if requiring pp fails.

The thread safety problem is due to undef, right?
Requiring the same file is thread-safe.
So maybe we just need to hide the redefinition warning (e.g. by setting $VERBOSE) during the require call?

Regarding visibility, #pp should be a module_function of Kernel like #p.

Updated by k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) over 6 years ago

also breaks when running ruby chrooted

Regardless of proposed implementation, require 'pp' wouldn't work if chrooted. I couldn't understand why it's problematic.

Regarding visibility, #pp should be a module_function of Kernel like #p.

It's already module_function, isn't it?
https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/246c986eac342ae7bbf05f3be97c92fc71f9d21d/lib/pp.rb#L26

(edit) For undef, probably we need the same approach as irb: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/246c986eac342ae7bbf05f3be97c92fc71f9d21d/lib/irb.rb#L706

Updated by jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) over 6 years ago

Eregon (Benoit Daloze) wrote:

The thread safety problem is due to undef, right?

Correct. The pp library defines Kernel#pp, so in verbose mode if you don't undef or remove the method first, this causes a warning in verbose mode. I think a verbose mode warning is preferable to thread-unsafe code. Here's a possible alternative implementation:

module Kernel
  def pp(*a)
    require 'pp'
  rescue LoadError
    p(*a)
  else
    pp(*a)
  end
end

To avoid the verbose mode warning, we could have pp include a different module in Object instead of modifying Kernel directly, and then use Kernel.send(:remove_method, :pp) to remove the method, but we'd need to rescue NameError raised by the remove_method call to ensure thread safety in that case.

Note that in all of these cases, Kernel#pp will break if Kernel is frozen.

Updated by shevegen (Robert A. Heiler) over 6 years ago

I agree with Yusuke Endoh.

I also wanted to suggest this many times before but shied away because
I was not sure if this would have any chance, perhaps due to speed
reason or something.

I love pp. It's my favourite way to "debug". :D

Just as tenderlove wrote on his blog that he is a "puts debugger",
I am a "pp debugger". :D

And the additional require is annoying. I mean, it's not a huge deal,
mind you, just one extra line, but if it were possible to do away
with it, I'd be all in favour of it. \o/

Updated by matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) over 6 years ago

Sounds good. Need to discuss implementation detail.

Matz.

Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago

We discussed this issue at today's Ruby committer's meeting, and matz accepted the feature itself.

jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) wrote:

I request the implementation be thread-safe and that it fall back to Kernel#p if requiring pp fails.

Thank you for your opinion.

Okay, I move undef pp from prelude.rb to lib/pp.rb (See the last patch in detail). The fatal race condition is fixed.
"Redefinition warnings" issue remains, but I think it is not significant because pp itself is "not so" thread-safe. Simultaneous multiple calls to pp will interleave the outputs as below. In principle, a user have to do exclusive control appropriately when calling pp (if s/he really cares).

$ ruby -rpp -e 'Thread.new { pp [1] * 10000 }; pp [2]*10000' | uniq
[1,
 1,
 1,[2,
 2,

 1,
 1, 2,
 2,

 1,
 1]
 2,
 2]

And, many in the meeting were against fallback to p. This is just a useful shortcut for pp, so it should fail when require "pp" fails.

A revised patch:

diff --git a/lib/pp.rb b/lib/pp.rb
index 7d1c502817..0e737d23f6 100644
--- a/lib/pp.rb
+++ b/lib/pp.rb
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ def pretty_inspect
   # prints arguments in pretty form.
   #
   # pp returns argument(s).
+  undef pp if method_defined?(:pp)
   def pp(*objs)
     objs.each {|obj|
       PP.pp(obj)
diff --git a/prelude.rb b/prelude.rb
index 7b98e28285..3069fdbaf0 100644
--- a/prelude.rb
+++ b/prelude.rb
@@ -141,3 +141,10 @@ def irb
     irb
   end
 end
+
+module Kernel
+  def pp(*objs)
+    require 'pp'
+    pp(objs)
+  end
+end

I'll commit it in a few days.

Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago

mame (Yusuke Endoh) wrote:

"Redefinition warnings" issue remains

I misunderstood. Ko1 said to me that the current require does exclusive control, so the redefinition warning issue should not occur (if it occurs, it is a bug). I'll commit it soon.

Actions #11

Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago

  • Status changed from Open to Closed

Applied in changeset trunk|r60944.


prelude.rb: Add Kernel#pp, a trigger for lib/pp.rb

[Feature #14123]

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

mame (Yusuke Endoh) wrote:

I misunderstood. Ko1 said to me that the current require does exclusive control, so the redefinition warning issue should not occur (if it occurs, it is a bug). I'll commit it soon.

Right, multiple calls to require "pp" will wait for one another and only one will actually load the file.
This didn't look thread-safe at first look but it seems fine with require's guarantees (assuming people only do require "pp", no #load but that sounds unlikely).

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

$ ruby -ryaml -e 'pp YAML.load_file ".travis.yml"'

is probably a nice example for this feature :)

Updated by jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) over 6 years ago

Eregon (Benoit Daloze) wrote:

Right, multiple calls to require "pp" will wait for one another and only one will actually load the file.
This didn't look thread-safe at first look but it seems fine with require's guarantees (assuming people only do require "pp", no #load but that sounds unlikely).

What happens in the following circumstance:

  • Thread 1 calls Kernel#pp, defined in prelude, which requires 'pp'.
  • During requiring of pp:
  undef pp if method_defined?(:pp)
  # Thread switch here
  def pp(*objs)
  • Thread 2 calls Kernel#pp during thread switch

Unless the thread switch is completely blocked during the execution of required code, it seems like this is still not thread safe.

Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) over 6 years ago

jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans) wrote:

Unless the thread switch is completely blocked during the execution of required code, it seems like this is still not thread safe.

Nice catch!

@mame (Yusuke Endoh) I think the new code is worth a comment that this is done for thread-safety in lib/pp.rb

I think suppressing warnings around the definition of pp would be nicer here.
A seemingly useless alias feels like a workaround.
Unfortunately the save/restore dance for changing $VERBOSE is not very nice.

Maybe we should have:

Warning.ignore do
  def pp
    ...
  end
end

If you think that's a good idea I'm happy to do those changes and open an issue for Warning.ignore.

Updated by akr (Akira Tanaka) over 6 years ago

mame (Yusuke Endoh) wrote:

Okay, my third try: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby-trunk/repository/revisions/60948

It is still not thread safe.

Consider a thread context switch at just after defining Kernel#pp
before defining PP class.

Index: lib/pp.rb
===================================================================
--- lib/pp.rb	(revision 60960)
+++ lib/pp.rb	(working copy)
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ module Kernel
   end
   undef __pp_backup__ if method_defined?(:__pp_backup__)
   module_function :pp
+  sleep 1 # thread context switch
 end
 
 ##

With the above patch, "uninitialized constant Kernel::PP" can
happen as as follows.

% ./ruby -w -Ilib -e '
t1 = Thread.new {
  Thread.current.report_on_exception = true
  pp :foo1
}
t2 = Thread.new {
  Thread.current.report_on_exception = true
  sleep 0.5
  pp :foo2       
}
t1.join rescue nil
t2.join rescue nil
'
#<Thread:0x000055dbf926eaa0@-e:6 run> terminated with exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
	3: from -e:9:in `block in <main>'
	2: from /home/ruby/tst2/ruby/lib/pp.rb:22:in `pp'
	1: from /home/ruby/tst2/ruby/lib/pp.rb:22:in `each'
/home/ruby/tst2/ruby/lib/pp.rb:23:in `block in pp': uninitialized constant Kernel::PP (NameError)
:foo1

Fix is simple: replacing Kernel#pp at last as r60961.

Updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh) over 6 years ago

akr-san, thank you!

Eregon, I think $VERBOSE dance is also thread-unsafe. So I personally like Warning.ignore if it is thread-local. I don't know how difficult it is to implement, though.

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