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Introducing Helix: High-Performance Ruby Made Easy
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Introducing Helix: High-Performance Ruby Made Easy
by Godfrey Chan and Yehuda KatzIn the RailsConf 2017 sponsored talk 'Introducing Helix: High-Performance Ruby Made Easy,' Godfrey Chan and Yehuda Katz explore Helix, an open-source toolkit for writing native Ruby extensions in Rust. The speakers explain that while Ruby is generally efficient for I/O-bound tasks, it can struggle with CPU-bound workloads, motivating the need for optimizing performance. Key points discussed in the presentation include:
- Background Context: The original Skylight agent was developed in Ruby, which provided a boost in productivity but faced limitations in performance for certain features, especially when tracking memory allocations.
- The Promise of C Libraries: Historically, creating performance gains in Ruby often involved writing C extensions, but this posed challenges like increased complexity and maintenance burdens.
- Rust's Promise: After experimenting with Rust, the speakers found it to be a compelling alternative. Rust offers C-like performance while enhancing safety and usability through a sophisticated type system and guarantees that help avoid common pitfalls seen in C programming.
- Helix Tooling: Helix simplifies the use of Rust in Ruby applications by reducing the boilerplate code required. Previous versions of the tool faced usability challenges, but improvements have been made, including removing boilerplate while enabling seamless integration into Rails apps.
- Demonstration: During the talk, a live demonstration showcased how to build a simple Rails application that leverages Helix for CPU-intensive tasks by implementing a method to flip a string using Rust. The integration was facilitated through a straightforward API that Ruby developers could easily adopt.
- Key Features and Use Cases: The speakers highlighted various use cases like background jobs, mailers, and data processing tasks where Helix could significantly improve performance. They stressed that Helix is well-suited for operations that can benefit from Rust’s efficiency and performance, particularly in computation-heavy scenarios.
- Future Development: The ongoing evolution of Helix is aimed at broadening its capabilities, including better support for Ruby constructs like optional arguments, more Ruby-like APIs, and enhancing documentation to support developers in the community.
In conclusion, Helix stands as a promising solution for Ruby developers looking to optimize performance for CPU-bound tasks while maintaining the ease and ergonomic benefits of Ruby. The presenters encourage the community to engage with the Helix project, explore its capabilities, and contribute to its development.
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Good afternoon, RailsConf '17! We'll be talking about the Helix project today.
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First, I hope you're having a great day.
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As you can see, I'm here on the Rails forum — yes, that's what we're doing.
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The most important thing to remember is to run 'bundle update rails'.
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And as you can see, we are successful!
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This is actually a sponsored talk by Skylight. I am required to sell you something, but honestly, I don't feel comfortable just promoting.
00:01:10.320
So, instead of selling you on model stuff, I thought I would highlight some really useful talks.
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There's another talk today that might be of interest. It’s called '160', about using a single codebase for web and mobile applications.
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If you have to leave, that’s fine.
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As for myself, I am Grateful, I am here today to talk about a project called Helix, which I discussed briefly last year.
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This project is an exciting development because Ruby is fast, but we also know it can be slow.
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Most of the time, Ruby’s speed is not a big concern; however, there are occasions when performance really does matter.
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To illustrate, let's look at some CPU-intensive workloads that might present challenges.
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I've been working on this project, along with my colleague, Yehuda Katz.
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Together, we are both RailsConf 2017 alumni, and we also work on the Ember.js framework.
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At Skylight, we are hiring senior engineers, so if you're interested, please come talk to us.
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Now, let me tell you about one feature we implemented this year called 'grades', which compares your app's performance to that of our other customers.
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That being said, now let's dive into the Helix project. Last year, I talked about Helix and how we have been working on improving Rails.
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In brief, Helix is an open-source toolkit designed to make writing native Ruby extensions in Rust easier.
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We’ve dedicated a lot of time to Helix and are excited to share what we have come up with.
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Everyone here loves writing Ruby; it’s an amazing language, but we also face performance challenges.
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For example, Ruby applications are often I/O bound, and developers typically spend a great deal of time waiting for database responses.
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Even when it doesn’t matter, there are times when performance is essential, especially with CPU-heavy workloads.
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To address performance, one effective approach is using C extensions.
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This is how Ruby successfully optimized libraries like Date and Pathname.
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Years ago, Sam Saffron discovered that the 'blank?' method was a hotspot in Discourse.
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He proceeded to write a C library called 'fast_blank' that sped up operations dramatically.
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So why don't we do more of this? What’s stopping us from writing more Rails functionality in C?
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In a nutshell, while C is fast, it's also quite complex and unsafe.
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Any small mistake could lead to a segmentation fault, which is something we're all wary of.
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Most developers prefer to stick with pure Ruby to avoid these risks.
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At Skylight, we faced similar challenges.
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We found that while our first version of the Skylight agent worked fine in Ruby, we struggled to add a lot of the features we wanted due to performance overhead.
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Originally, we thought we could solve our performance issues with C or C++ extensions, but we encountered similar burdens.
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This led us to consider trying Rust.
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The first trials went so well that we eventually migrated much of our core functionality to Rust.
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Rust is a compiled, statically typed language that is exceptionally fast.
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What makes Rust particularly appealing is its advanced type system and ownership model, which guarantee memory safety without a garbage collector.
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This aspect allows you to avoid data races, making it suitable for concurrent programming.
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High-level programming languages such as Ruby often present a trade-off between abstraction and performance.
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However, in Rust, you can frequently use high-level abstractions without paying the overhead cost.
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The Rust compiler is capable of optimizing code efficiently, often yielding better performance than manually crafted loops.
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To illustrate this, when we ported the fast_blank example to Rust, we achieved similar performance as the C version with a simple one-liner.
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While the original implementation required about 50 lines of boilerplate code, we have created Helix to eliminate the unnecessary boilerplate, allowing developers to write cleaner, more concise Rust code.
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In the past, there was a clear distinction between scripting languages and systems languages, with the former primarily handling I/O operations.
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However, Helix allows you to harness the power of Rust while writing Ruby, avoiding the need to compromise on performance.
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Essentially, you can begin with Ruby and transition your CPU-bound logic to Helix as needed.
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So, to summarize my talk from last year, we’ve made substantial progress in making Helix accessible to everyday developers.
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We’ve streamlined the setup process and minimized boilerplate code significantly.
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We are focusing on making it feasible for developers to incorporate Rust code into their existing Rails applications, targeting CPU-intensive tasks to optimize runtime performance.
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Now, let me show you a demo of a very simple Rails app that flips text upside down using our Rust functionality.
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We are going to generate a Rails app that allows text input, and upon clicking a button, it will display the reversed text.
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The implementation relies on our previously defined Rust methods for heavy text transformations.
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Furthermore, I will show you how seamless it is to deploy Rust alongside Ruby in a Rails application.
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As we start by generating our Rails app, we're using the latest release candidate, and we're skipping Active Record to keep things simple.
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Now that our Rails server is running, we will add the Helix gem to our Gemfile and then install it.
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From there, we use Helix's generator to create the necessary Rust files.
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The generated files will include both Ruby and Rust components, structured to help streamline your development process.
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Next, I will implement the core functionality in Rust to ensure efficient processing of the text flip.
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We will define a Rust method that performs the reversal of the input text.
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Now that we can compile this Rust code, I will run it to see if our implementation works.
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After running our tests, we will ensure everything functions correctly before deployment.
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The Helix project has allowed us to write concise and efficient code, seamlessly combining Rust's performance with Ruby's ergonomics.
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As we continue to build on this framework, we aim to make the integration as smooth as possible for developers.
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After setting everything up, we will deploy this app on Heroku.
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This deployment process is straightforward. You just push your code to Heroku's Git repository.
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Our app is now up and running, with the Rust code successfully integrated into the Ruby on Rails framework.
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As for the use cases for Helix, it is particularly suitable for CPU-intensive tasks.
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Heavy computational problems with simple input types can benefit greatly from Rust's performance.
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Additionally, integrating existing Rust libraries into Ruby applications is another strong advantage.
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Helix enables a user-friendly interface to access high-performance libraries written in Rust.
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Using Helix, you can build background jobs or perform CPU-intensive processing in Rails.
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We'll also provide detailed documentation on our roadmaps and features as they develop.
00:19:05.490
We invite you all to check out our resources and consider contributing.
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We are looking forward to engaging with both new and experienced developers interested in exploring the potential of Helix.
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That's all from me for now. Thank you for your attention!
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I hope you enjoy the rest of RailsConf.
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