Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

rubini.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 118 posts

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#41

Post by Tobu »

mbell wrote: post #23
Terr_ wrote: post #8

Regardless of other warts with the language, I really love how the Java Language Specification lays down the law.

I find Java's approach to specs to be one of the worst parts of the ecosystem. I've come across numerous obvious bugs with various Java specced libraries that have been marked `won't fix` because the bug is actually either a bug in the spec or just got left out in order to rush the spec out the door (rush being a loose term here given how often Java actually updates it's various specs).

Maybe this doesn't work for the library ecosystem (standard libraries being where modules go to die), but the language and VM specs are very well designed.

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#42

Post by vinceguidry »

kej wrote: post #31
zem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's unreasonable to expect the dev who has already put a ton of work into developing and maintaining rubyspec and making it work nicely with all the ruby implementations and versions he could to have to put in the additional work to do this as well. I don't blame him for getting discouraged at having to chase a moving target on top of all that - I agree with him that having the MRI devs contribute to rubyspec was a…

Why is it unreasonable to expect the RubySpec dev to do additional work, but reasonable to expect additional work from the MRI devs to comply with RubySpec? I get that "the implementation is the standard" is frustrating for people who want to make an alternate implementation, but why should that obligate the original developers to accept some third party's definition of what their project should be?

It's not a third-party definition, it's their definition, should they want to contribute to it. By writing Ruby specs you're defining Ruby.

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#43

Post by mbell »

Tobu wrote: post #41
mbell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Java's approach to specs to be one of the worst parts of the ecosystem. I've come across numerous obvious bugs with various Java specced libraries that have been marked `won't fix` because the bug is actually either a bug in the spec or just got left out in order to rush the spec out the door (rush being a loose term here given how often Java actually updates it's various specs).

Maybe this doesn't work for the library ecosystem (standard libraries being where modules go to die), but the language and VM specs are very well designed.

> but the language and VM specs are very well designed

Java's language spec exists, I'll give it that. Well designed? It was when it was created but, it has evolved very poorly. Look at C# as an example of what a similar language designed at a similar time could become while still being 'Enterprise'.

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#44

Post by MBCook »

danielweber wrote: post #11
joevandyk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It contains 10 reasons why the MRI tests aren't sufficient.

The Ruby devs also doesn't use any libraries I wrote, and that's okay. Why is RubySpec the special sauce that is so special that the devs not using it is horrible?

That's basically how I read this. It seems that Ruby is specified de facto by what MRI does.

Reading this blog post it sounds like the developer of RubySpec did this:

1. Decided Ruby needed more formal specification 2. Made their own formal specification 3. Kept telling the core developers to use it 4. Is giving up after years of the core developers not bending to the way he thinks that Ruby should work

The whole thing just read as kind of arrogant to me. Why should the ruby developers have to follow his specification? The fact that there is a bug that causes a segfault only indicates there is a bug, I don't see it as an indictment of the core language process.

Instead of saying "you should be using my test", you could commit mew tests and patches to upstream. If some of the existing tests or two large or don't test only one function, why not submit a patch to fix those issues. That doesn't mean the entire test week needs to be thrown out and the language respecified.

This seemed more like someone trying to force themselves into a position and giving up after a few years.

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#45

Post by joevandyk »

headius wrote: post #35
stormbrew wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, just the fact that rubyspec exposes a segfault in a new release is more than reason enough that they should be using it. It is de facto a more complete test suite than the ad hoc one they've been making. Given that, the onus is on the MRI developers to demonstrate why they are actively avoiding the use of a tool that could improve the stability of their language and environment.

They have used and contributed to RubySpec in the past, but many (like me) were turned off by the maintainers' attitudes toward contributors and lack of respect. For example, see the zenspider link elsewhere in this thread. Nobody questions RubySpec as a project. But there are many nontechnical reasons why it was never adopted wholeheartedly by ruby-core.

Now that the main maintainer quit, can those nontechnical reasons be resolved?

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#46

Post by lnanek2 »

Matz is the creator of Ruby. If this guy really wanted to play ball, why didn't he just submit PRs for improving the real Ruby's test suite? Instead he just made his own thing, well duh it didn't end up a part of the real Ruby. OK, a hosting provider wanted their own Ruby implementation to fix concurrency issues, but that doesn't suddenly make the creator of the language have to do things their way. If you fork or reimplement a project and do whatever you want, well you took control so you gained something, but the creator has no obligation to change to your fork/reimplementation.

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#47

Post by MBCook »

sams99 wrote: post #6

The thing I find depressing and frustrating about this kind of discussion is the fatalism and non-constructiveness. I really wish it was: "I set up a server that runs ruby spec on ruby-head daily and automatically reports spec failures to ruby-bugs" So many companies are making big bucks off Ruby, yet so little are willing to fork out a bit of money and time to make Ruby better.

> reports spec failures to ruby-bugs

But why should the Ruby developers work to fix 'bugs' against an unsupported 3rd party specification?

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#48

Post by jfaucett »

nateberkopec wrote: post #22

Rubyspec is a great project for all the reasons Brian outlines. However, it's also a failure - in part, due to Brian and his attitude towards contributors. See this twitter conversation: https://twitter.com/the_zenspider/status/547527644535726080 He's been grinding on Rubyspec for years, bless him, but I think there's a reason why he was unable to rally the community behind his effort, both in terms of gathering more…

"RubySpec is far from The Only Solution"

you're right, but I remember learning quit a bit of ruby by working through RubySpec back in the day. and I remember liking how well structured, logical and organized the suite was, very exemplary. so I'm sorry to see it go. I have no perspective on Brian or the mri devs so I can't say anything about the situation around it, I just liked the code and spec and found it very well done.

It would certainly be nice to have such a ruby specification and test suite that was endorsed by ruby community at large (unlike what I saw in those example MRI tests).

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#49

Post by MBCook »

fat0wl wrote: post #30
manyxcxi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did it become a serious Enterprise™ language? Not being flippant or denigrating Ruby, but when I do work for established enterprises, it's never in Ruby. Java, .NET, PHP, and occasionally Python. Just because startups use it to get off the ground quickly, or to build the front end of their website doesn't make it enterprise.

yes I don't want to get into a flamewar either, but I am an ex-RoR dev and since switching to enterprise Java I hear almost nothing about it largely due to enormously widespread acceptance of Spring (JavaEE is even re-gaining some traction). Long story short (and hope my facts are right! not swearing by this, was just some googling...), I had to optimize some old code for an RoR client I freelance for and wanted to a…

That sounds like a philosophy of RoR, not Ruby. How would adopting RubySpec help with that?

Re: MRI Developers Don't Use RubySpec and It's Hurting Ruby

#50

Post by viraptor »

kej wrote: post #31
zem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's unreasonable to expect the dev who has already put a ton of work into developing and maintaining rubyspec and making it work nicely with all the ruby implementations and versions he could to have to put in the additional work to do this as well. I don't blame him for getting discouraged at having to chase a moving target on top of all that - I agree with him that having the MRI devs contribute to rubyspec was a…

Why is it unreasonable to expect the RubySpec dev to do additional work, but reasonable to expect additional work from the MRI devs to comply with RubySpec? I get that "the implementation is the standard" is frustrating for people who want to make an alternate implementation, but why should that obligate the original developers to accept some third party's definition of what their project should be?

They don't have to accept it. I don't have an opinion one way or another about the rubyspec being some kind of a standard. But if it exists and shows a sigsegv scenario and nobody bothered to run it before a release... that's a failure of developers. It's not even additional work.
Post reply on HN