🪶 SilentStream

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👣 How will this project approach the September 2025 hostile takeover of RubyGems? 🚑️

I've summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

🌻 Synopsis

SilentStream is an extraction of some parts of ActiveSupport's Kernel Reporting Core Extentions around silencing IO streams.

Since July 2014 silence_stream, silence_stderr, capture, silence, and quietly have been deprecated because they are not thread safe. See that discussion in the PR where it all went down. I rely on them a lot in single threaded code, and so I plan to keep them alive. With the exception of silence, which was just an alias of capture.

This gem was taken out of Rails but it is not Rails dependent. The extraction was total (even the tests!), and this is now a pure Ruby library, which can be used in any Ruby project without encumbrances. I dramatically increased test coverage to 100% / 100% for lines / branches, and fixed issues with modern Rubies, This gem has no runtime dependencies.

NOTE

One aspect of what this gem provides can be achieved with the Rails' built-in LoggerSilence, which is thread safe. You will have to decide what is right for you!

Doing a Rails <= 4 to Rails >= 5 Upgrade?

The reason for not keeping silence as it was in Rails 4, i.e. an alias of capture, is that the just mentioned LoggerSilence now uses this term, and it is shipping with Rails 5. I don't want to make this gem incompatible with Rails 5, so you will have to convert Rails <= 4 implementations that utilize silence over to capture when using this gem. One further point of difference is this gem does not add the methods to Kernel or Object. You can do that if you like via include. By default this gem does not pollute anything, so you will need to include SilentStream in any class, or RSpec context, using these methods.

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💡 Info you can shake a stick at

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Works with MRI Ruby 2
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Source
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... 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatibility

Compatible with MRI Ruby 2.3+, JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 2.4+. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem's runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

The amazing test matrix is powered by the kettle-dev stack.

How kettle-dev manages complexity in tests

Gem	Source	Role	Total downloads
appraisal2	GitHub	multi-dependency Appraisal matrix generation
appraisal2-rubocop	GitHub	RuboCop Appraisal generator integration
kettle-dev	GitHub	development, release, and CI workflow tooling
kettle-jem	GitHub	Appraisals & CI workflow templates
kettle-soup-cover	GitHub	SimpleCov coverage policy and reporting
kettle-test	GitHub	standard test runner and coverage harness
rubocop-lts	GitHub	Ruby-version-aware linting
turbo_tests2	GitHub	parallel test execution

Federated DVCS

Find this repo on federated forges (Coming soon!)

Federated DVCS Repository	Status	Issues	PRs	Wiki	CI
🧪 galtzo-floss/silent_stream on GitLab	The Truth	💚	💚	💚	🐭 Tiny Matrix
🧊 galtzo-floss/silent_stream on CodeBerg	An Ethical Mirror (Donate)	💚	💚	➖	⭕️ No Matrix
🐙 galtzo-floss/silent_stream on GitHub	Another Mirror	💚	💚	💚	💯 Full Matrix

Enterprise Support

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

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  📊@Pointy Haired Boss: An enterprise support subscription is "never gonna let you down", and supports open source maintainers

Alternatively:

• 
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• 

✨ Installation

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add silent_stream

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install silent_stream

⚙️ Configuration

There is no global configuration. Include or extend SilentStream::Extracted where the four stream helpers are needed, or include SilentStream when silence_all is also required. Set NO_SILENCE=true to bypass silencing while debugging or running a CI job.

🔧 Basic Usage

Four standard methods you may be familiar with from ActiveSupport's previous implementation are provided:

silence_stderr
silence_stream
capture
quietly

They are direct replicas, except not mixed into Kernel or Object, so in order to use them you must mix them into your classes or modules.

class Bogosity
  include SilentStream::Extracted # allows use at instance level
  extend SilentStream::Extracted # allows use at class level
  # or
  include SilentStream # access everything, and add #silence_all method, see below
end

In addition there is a silence_all method that is a useful wrapper that can be easily instrumented (turned off and on) with an ENV variable switch.

• Environment toggle: Set NO_SILENCE=true to bypass silencing entirely (useful in CI or when debugging). Any truthy value other than the literal string "true" is ignored — use exactly true.

Including the SilentStream namespace fully gives access to this enhanced method, as well as the extracted methods above, and also makes everything available at the class and instance levels.

class Bogosity
  include SilentStream # allows use of any method at instance or class level

  def silent
    silence_all(true) do
      puts "play that funky music"
      Rails.logger.info("git jiggy with it")
    end
  end
  class << self
    def noise
      silence_all(false) do
        puts "play that funky music"
        Rails.logger.info("git jiggy with it")
      end
    end
  end
end

And run

>> Bogosity.new.silent # has no output
=> nil
>> Bogosity.noise # is noisy
play that funky music
=> nil

Use in Specs / Tests

Make the methods avaialble:

RSpec.configure do |conf|
  conf.include(SilentStream)
end

Then add a test on output:

it "has output" do
  output = capture(:stdout) { subject.request(:get, "/success") }
  logs = [
    "INFO -- request: GET https://api.example.com/success",
    "INFO -- response: Status 200",
  ]
  expect(output).to(include(*logs))
end

Better use in specs

config.include(SilentStream)

  # Silence STDOUT for examples NOT tagged with :check_output
config.around(:example) do |example|
  if example.metadata[:check_output]
    example.run
  else
    silence_stream($stdout) do
      example.run
    end
  end
end

See it in practice in the specs for the oauth2 gem and the debug_logging gem

Migrate from ActiveSupport::Testing::Stream, or remove ActiveSupport completely, in your ruby library!

For most scenarios, simple. Change three lines. Here's an example from a gem I just converted from ActiveSupport to SilentStream (see commit)

gemspec diff:

-spec.add_development_dependency 'activesupport', '>= 5'
+spec.add_development_dependency 'silent_stream', '>= 1'

spec_helper.rb diff:

-require 'active_support/testing/stream'
+require 'silent_stream'

RSpec.configure do |config|
-  config.include ActiveSupport::Testing::Stream
+  config.include SilentStream

Run spec suite to verify everything is good. This gem is as close as can be to a drop-in replacement for Rails' ActiveSupport::Testing::Stream.

🦷 FLOSS Funding

While galtzo-floss tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of... "dollars" would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, Open Collective is our preferred funding platform.

If you're working in a company that's making significant use of galtzo-floss tools we'd appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a galtzo-floss sponsor.

You can support the development of galtzo-floss tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, PayPal, Open Collective and Tidelift.

📍 NOTE
If doing a sponsorship in the form of donation is problematic for your company from an accounting standpoint, we'd recommend the use of Tidelift, where you can get a support-like subscription instead.

Open Collective for Individuals

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

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Open Collective for Organizations

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Another way to support open-source

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

🔐 Security

See SECURITY.md.

🤝 Contributing

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

🚀 Release Instructions

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code Coverage

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🪇 Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting with this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

🌈 Contributors

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/galtzo-floss/silent_stream/-/graphs/main

📌 Versioning

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("silent_stream", "~> 1.0")

📌 Is "Platform Support" part of the public API? More details inside.

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

📄 License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

© Copyright

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

Copyright holders

• Copyright (c) 2018-2020, 2024-2026 Peter H. Boling

🤑 A request for help

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I'm hoping to be able to pay for my kids' health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help, use the RubyForum or Discord.

To say "thanks!" ☝️ Join the community or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌 💌

Please give the project a star ⭐ ♥.

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️

Field	Value
Package	silent_stream
Description	🪶 (formerly) ActiveSupport Kernel Reporting Detritus with a few enhancementsFund overlooked open source projects - bottom of stack, dev/test dependencies: floss-funding.dev
Homepage	https://github.com/galtzo-floss/silent_stream
Source	https://github.com/galtzo-floss/silent_stream
License	MIT
Funding	https://github.com/sponsors/pboling, https://ko-fi.com/pboling, https://liberapay.com/pboling/donate, https://opencollective.com/galtzo-floss, https://thanks.dev/u/gh/pboling, https://tidelift.com/funding/github/rubygems/silent_stream, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pboling