Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I have to use Celluloid::IO for everything? Can I not use Ruby libraries that use normal blocking I/O?

A: No, you can use blocking I/O libraries, but there are a few corner cases where Celluloid::IO can be quite helpful. Celluloid::IO allows you to multiplex I/O operations with actor messages in Celluloid, which can be quite helpful. For more information, please see When should I use Celluloid::IO?

Q: My Celluloid::IO program has terrible throughput! It's like I can't handle more than one connection at a time! What's happening?

A: Celluloid::IO allows you to handle many connections from a single actor, however in order to make that work, much like a system like EventMachine or Node.js all I/O operations must be non-blocking (i.e. they must be handled through Celluloid::IO) and computation must be kept to a minimum.

For a list of "non-blocking" operations that can safely performed inside Celluloid::IO actors that are managing multiple connections, please see the list of actions which suspend tasks from the Celluloid execution modes wiki page.