Ruby and Rust

This repository contains a demo Rails app that contains a naive implementation - in Ruby and Rust - of an algorithm to find prime numbers.

This repo is part of a talk I gave at RubyConf Brasil 2016, in which I introduce Rust as a possible solution when - in a Rails app - there are features for which Ruby performance is not good enough. If you are interested, you can find the slides (in Brazilian Portuguse) I used during the presentation here: https://speakerdeck.com/alexbrahastoll/ruby-and-rust

This demo Rails app integrates with Rust code via FFI (Foreign Function Interface).

This demo uses Ruby 2.3.1, Rails 5.0.0.1 and Rust 1.11.0-nightly (801d2682d 2016-07-06).

Running the project

After cloning the repository, install its dependencies:

bundle install

Then, compile the Rust library:

(from inside the app's main folder)

cd lib/cargo/primes
cargo build --release

Finally, run the app with the following command:

bundle exec rails s

By default, the primes will be discoved using the Rust implementation. If you want to use the Ruby implementation, fire up the server using the following command:

PRIMES_IMPL=RubyPrime bundle exec rails s

Performance benchmarks

This repo includes two Rake tasks that execute and compare the Ruby and Rust implementations.

Using Ruby's Standard Library Benchmark tool:

bundle exec rake performance:ruby_vs_rust

Using Evan Phoenix's benchmark-ips gem:

bundle exec rake performance:ips_ruby_vs_rust

Possible issues

This project was only tested on Mac OS X 10.11.5. If you are using another *NIX operating system and you run into issues, you may try to compile the Rust library as a Shared Object (.so). If you decide to do so, remember to also change the library path at the RustyPrime module to reflect the new extension of the Rust library.