From: eregontp@...
Date: 2016-04-29T11:40:44+00:00
Subject: [ruby-core:75250] [Ruby trunk Feature#6647] Exceptions raised in threads should be logged

Issue #6647 has been updated by Benoit Daloze.


Shyouhei Urabe wrote:
> I remember this topic was looked at in the developer meeting this month.  Matz was positive to have Thread#report_on_exception, but not default true.

Thanks for the reply.

> Sorry I don't remember the reason why he was not comfortable with defaulting this.

That's unfortunate.
The main reason to have it by default is to give a chance when developing with Threads to notice the error in the sub-thread.
When trying out threads, the program will of course have very little chance to have Thread.abort_on_exception or Thread.report_on_exception in it,
particularly if the author is not extremely familiar with current Ruby thread exception pitfalls.
Debug mode (-d) would help but it's also a feature most people ignore or do not think to use (and it outputs much more).

That's why I think report_on_exception by default is the only reasonable choice for people not extremely familiar with Ruby thread and their exception handling.

I would guess the argument is about Thread#join or Thread#value.
But threads in Ruby are OS threads, using them for just one computation (like a future) is inefficient as it incurs spawning a OS thread every time.
For this and many other reasons, joining threads is often done much later than when the exception happens (if ever, for instance with a dead/livelock it would not).
Here is another example: Communication with threads is done most often with Queue, yet if the main Thread pops from the queue to get results from the sub-thread (producer) and the sub-thread throws an exception, the program will deadlock with no clue given to the programmer.

So relying on #join or #value is very brittle and I believe causes much more harm than a few extra exceptions printed on stdout, which can be easily handled with Thread.current.report_on_exception = false.

----------------------------------------
Feature #6647: Exceptions raised in threads should be logged
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6647#change-58380

* Author: Charles Nutter
* Status: Assigned
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: Yukihiro Matsumoto
----------------------------------------
Many applications and users I have dealt with have run into bugs due to Ruby's behavior of quietly swallowing exceptions raised in threads. I believe this is a bug, and threads should always at least log exceptions that bubble all the way out and terminate them.

The implementation should be simple, but I'm not yet familiar enough with the MRI codebase to provide a patch. The exception logging should be logged in the same way top-level exceptions get logged, but perhaps with information about the thread that was terminated because of the exception.

Here is a monkey patch that simulates what I'm hoping to achieve with this bug:


class << Thread
  alias old_new new

  def new(*args, &block)
    old_new(*args) do |*bargs|
      begin
        block.call(*bargs)
      rescue Exception => e
        raise if Thread.abort_on_exception || Thread.current.abort_on_exception
        puts "Thread for block #{block.inspect} terminated with exception: #{e.message}"
        puts e.backtrace.map {|line| "  #{line}"}
      end
    end
  end
end

Thread.new { 1 / 0 }.join
puts "After thread"   

__END__

Output:

system ~/projects/jruby $ ruby thread_error.rb 
Thread for block #<Proc:0x000000010d008a80@thread_error.rb:17> terminated with exception: divided by 0
  thread_error.rb:17:in `/'
  thread_error.rb:17
  thread_error.rb:7:in `call'
  thread_error.rb:7:in `new'
  thread_error.rb:5:in `initialize'
  thread_error.rb:5:in `old_new'
  thread_error.rb:5:in `new'
  thread_error.rb:17
After thread




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