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0 pointsdavesims14y ago0 comments

If edge case segfaults were fatal flaws Windows should never have shipped. I say 'edge case' because obviously there are millions of lines of Ruby code running for years on MRI/YARV/REE that have not encountered this error often enough to cause the kind of breathless panic you seem to think is appropriate.

BTW the CLR is not a good alternative runtime for Ruby, might not ever be: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/whats-next-for-microsoft...

You did good work here -- don't hurt your credibility with overstatement.

0 comments

jjore14y ago

Well, the problem here is that C using gems are going to often be memory corruptingly buggy until and unless either the gem source is updated to declare the proper parts volatile or Ruby's own C API is reworked to evolve this bug out of existence and then gems would have to be updated to use the API anyway.

Both problems are hard and the current state of affairs is apparently some random amount of the time we'll get memory corruption bugs.

KirinDave14y ago

It's worse than that. We don't actually know where it occurs. There are clearly some gems where it does, but it could also be occurring elsewhere in the VM.

Just figuring this out is a non-trivial project.

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