Ruby - GSoC ‘22 Final Report

Background

RBS is a newly developed syntax language for describing structure of Ruby programs, released with Ruby 3.0.0. RBS is a very useful addition to implement static/runtime type checking for Ruby, which is a dynamically typed language.

Project

My GSoC project with Ruby aimed at implementing a plugin for RDoc to generate documentation from RBS source code and upstreaming changes to RDoc to support RBS specific data structures such as Interfaces, Type Aliases, Type Parameters(generics), etc.

Specifications:

Descriptive Goal

Work

Pull Request Description Status
RDoc Plugin for RBS RDoc Plugin for generating documentation from RBS source code Merged
Support RBS generics in RDoc Add support in RDoc for RBS specific data structure, type parameters(generics) In Review
Enhance RDoc plugin for RBS with generics Update RDoc plugin for RBS to support type parameters(generics) In Review

Repositories

Completed Work

Part 01 - RDoc Plugin

  • Implemented a plugin for RDoc which parses RBS source code and generates RDoc based documentation from it.
    • As part of the initial release, the plugin supports only the data structures common to Ruby and RBS, such as class, module, method, attr_*, etc.
    • RBS specific data structures such as Type Aliases, etc are not supported yet.
    • The plugin has been released in a pre-release version, 2.7.0.pre.1

Part 02 - Upstreaming changes to support RBS specific data structures

  • Upstreamed changes to RDoc to support RBS specific data structure, Type Parameters(generics).
    • Also introduced a new syntax in RDoc markdown format to support the type parameters feature in Ruby & C source as well.
    • The above was done to ensure consistent documentation across RDoc, irrespective of the origin of the documentation.
    • The syntax introduced a new key: :type-parameters: and follows the same syntax as that of RBS for defining generics:
    •   #
  # :type-parameters:
  # in Y < String
  # unchecked out Elem < Integer
  # X
  class Test
  end
  # Will result in a documentation as follows
  # class Test [in Y < String, unchecked out Elem < Integer, X]

Learning Outcomes

  • One of the best learning outcomes of this project was a practical experience in coding, following SOLID coding principles.
  • I learnt a lot about type systems, type checking, etc. My mentor provided me with resources to get started off with understanding the basics of types & type systems I always had a knack for learning about the underlying & abstract implementations of programming languages. This project exposed me to a variety of concepts & techniques which helped me understand the working of a programming language.
  • I also got to learn about writing tests for a variety of use cases & the use cases of writing tests while maintaining a large codebase.
  • After having worked on this project, I got to learn a lot about the open source culture, such as planning, brainstorming about ideas & approaches, structured way of coding, involving with the community & contributing to projects.
  • I also got to learn about designing & implementing a clean, user friendly interface while building command line based utilities.

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank my mentor Soutaro Matsumoto sir for having guided me throughout the course of this project. He was really very helpful & always provided timely constructive feedback regarding my work & ideas. As GSoC mentions in one of it’s guides, mentor is the most important asset for a student in GSoC, which was true in my case. My mentor was truly an asset for me during the course of this program. Once again I would like to thank my mentor for having assisted me throughout the program. I would also like to thank the Ruby community for their assistance & guidance. I wish to continue contributing to this wonderful community of Ruby developers to the best of my capacity

I would also like to thank Mohit Tahilani sir, Govind Jeevan, Pavan Vachhanih, Abhishek Kumar, Salman Shah & Anumeha Agarwal for motivating & guiding me in applying to this program.

I would like to sincerely thank Google for organising such a program which helps several students like me get started with their open source journey & become long standing open source contributors. It is an extra ordinary feeling to look at several developers use tools built or coded by you for various purposes. I sincerely wish to continue contributing to open source.