--- title: "On the state of Ractors in Ruby" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 741 published_at: "2025-03-06" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/741" --- Plus JRuby needs your help, and using Phlex to render emails. | #​741 — March 6, 2025 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/741) Together with [![Datadog\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_700,h_190/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:10/vuhqm1wlyvxuddx1zxr8.png)](https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/apm/debugging-ruby/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=dg-apm-ww-debugging-ruby-trial) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/mwj15b9blxax44xexzv7.jpg)](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/02/27/whats-the-deal-with-ractors.html) [What’s the Deal with Ractors?](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/02/27/whats-the-deal-with-ractors.html) — Introduced in Ruby 3.0, [Ractors](https://ruby-doc.org/core-3.0.2/Ractor.html) provide an actor-based, truly parallel (bye GVL!) execution model, but they still remain experimental and any idea of their widespread use hasn’t panned out. Jean digs into what makes them tick, what they offer, and why they still have their uses, despite the current shortcomings. Jean Boussier 💡 If you'd prefer a more introductory piece to ractors, [this tutorial by Mirosław Pragłowski](https://blog.arkency.com/ractor-getting-started/) covers the practical bases of using them. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/5a462f38.png)](https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/apm/debugging-ruby/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=dg-apm-ww-debugging-ruby-trial) [Optimize Ruby App Performance in Real-Time](https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/apm/debugging-ruby/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=dg-apm-ww-debugging-ruby-trial) — Visualize Ruby performance using detailed flame graphs to identify bottlenecks and latency. Debug and optimize your code by tracing requests across web servers, databases, and services with Datadog APM. Start a free trial today. Datadog sponsor [The Pitchfork Story](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/03/04/the-pitchfork-story.html) — Rails core member and Shopify engineer Jean led the development of a Rack HTTP server called [Pitchfork](https://github.com/Shopify/pitchfork). Here, he goes into a lot of fascinating depth about the motivations behind Pitchfork’s creation, the memory efficiency it offers, and teaches us quite a bit about Ruby along the way. Jean Boussier **IN BRIEF:** - [JRuby](https://www.jruby.org/) 10 (with Ruby 3.4 compatibility) is just around the corner and Charles Oliver Nutter is [looking for your help in testing it out,](https://github.com/jruby/jruby/issues/8675) particularly against third-party libraries. - 🇬🇧 Did you know the British government uses an (open source) Rails app for publishing content on its official Web site? [It's called Whitehall,](https://github.com/alphagov/whitehall) after the area where the British government is largely centered. - [Ruby Central's latest monthly update](https://rubycentral.org/news/the-ruby-central-readme-feb-2025-newsletter/) focuses on _RailsConf 2025_ news. - 👕 [Ruby Tshirts](https://rubytshirts.com/) is an attempt to create some Ruby-themed merch from Andy Croll of [BrightonRuby](https://brightonruby.com/)fame. [Rails Views, Web Components, React.. Why Make a Choice?](https://www.aha.io/engineering/articles/rails-views-web-components-react) — A novel take on choosing an approach for your app’s views. Most shops pick Rails+Hotwire or React SPAs, but Aha! looks at where each view framework excels and uses them all. Jeremy Wells (Aha! Engineering) [Using Phlex for Emails: Action Mailer Without ERB](https://camillovisini.com/coding/phlex-for-rails-emails-action-mailer-without-erb) — [Phlex](https://www.phlex.fun/) has grown in popularity as a more OO ERB replacement and it suits emails pretty well too. Camillo Visini [Keep Postgres Maintenance from Slowing Down Your Ruby App](https://events.zoom.us/ev/AlEFPGvPxH6KNfpNmpZqz9VgcLKBd4PhtHLtfLFygO5sK3UqhQyd~AgJPtMk1R_FM0n5S6fMq-lRdUPscnVmdTmUFN2YYAvgsCaHxQgv03BZ0nKorDTIo7jfjOxW9kQLlJRrZVg_Vhhjc1A) — Secure your spot to learn the proactive maintenance practices that uncover hidden database performance risks before they escalate. pganalyze sponsor 📄 [Migrating from Rails Secrets to Credentials](https://danielabaron.me/blog/migrating-from-rails-secrets-to-credentials/) – A lot of helpful advice if you need to tackle the same process. Daniela Baron 📄 [A Tale of 3 Aliases](https://www.fastruby.io/blog/a-tale-of-3-aliases.html) – How to choose between `alias`, `alias_method`, and `alias_attribute`. Mateus Pereira 📄 [Decorating Arrays with SimpleDelegator](https://ryanbigg.com/2025/03/decorating-arrays-with-simpledelegator) Ryan Bigg 📄 [Seeds of Destruction](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/seeds-of-destruction) – A look at testing your `db/seeds.rb` setup so those seeds don’t turn into pesky weeds.. Louis Antonopoulos 📄 [Rails 8 Assets: How Propshaft and `importmap-rails` Work Together](https://radanskoric.com/articles/rails-assets-propshaft-importmaps) Radan Skorić 📄 [Migrating from Sidekiq to Solid Queue](https://www.donnfelker.com/migrating-from-sidekiq-to-solid-queue/) Donn Felker 📄 [Understanding Insertion Sort in Ruby](https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/ruby-insertion-sort/) Julie Kent 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ny7fzpc9aimaquhwaqbc.jpg)](https://github.com/michaeleisel/Exeggutor/) [Exeggutor: A Unified Interface for Managing Subprocesses](https://github.com/michaeleisel/Exeggutor/) — A library aiming to bring some added calm to dealing with the often fraught process of executing other programs from Ruby by way of `exeg` and `exeg_async` methods that can do it all. Michael Eisel 🤖 [OmniAI 2.0: A Unified Ruby API for Multiple AI Providers](https://ksylvest.com/posts/2025-03-03/omniai-2-0) — If you’ve worked with hosted LLM platforms from Ruby before, you’ve _probably_ used [ruby-openai](https://github.com/alexrudall/ruby-openai), but OmniAI abstracts things to support various platforms and their different features without shoehorning everything into the OpenAI approach. [GitHub repo.](https://github.com/ksylvest/omniai) Kevin Sylvestre [Seamless Rails Upgrades: Expert Maintenance. Fixed Price](https://reinteractive.com/service/code-care) — Upgrade RoR smoothly. We offer expert Rails maintenance at a fixed price. Secure, performant, minimal disruptions. Outdated gems? Breaking changes? We handle it. reinteractive / CodeCare sponsor [ParallelTests 5.0: More Cores == Faster Tests](https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests) — Speed up Minitest, RSpec, Turnip, Cucumber or Spinach by running in parallel across multiple cores. v5.0 brings Ruby 3.4 support. Michael Grosser [The Git Gem 3.0: A `git` Wrapper for Use from Ruby](https://github.com/ruby-git/ruby-git) — If you want to work with the `git` client from Ruby, this provides an interface. Scott Chacon et al. [Phony: International Phone Number Normalizing and Formatting](https://github.com/floere/phony) — For full, international [E.164 standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164) numbers only. Florian R. Hanke - [RBS::Inline v0.11.0](https://github.com/soutaro/rbs-inline) – Embed RBS type declarations into Ruby code as comments. - [Pundit 2.5](https://github.com/varvet/pundit) – Minimal authorization through OO design and pure Ruby classes. - ⭐ [Sidekiq 8.0](https://github.com/sidekiq/sidekiq) – The background job processor. [Changelog.](https://github.com/sidekiq/sidekiq/blob/main/Changes.md#800) - [Phlex 2.1.0](https://github.com/phlex-ruby/phlex/releases/tag/2.1.0) – The pure Ruby view framework. - [Memery v1.7.0](https://github.com/tycooon/memery) – Gem that simplifies memoization of method return values. - [React on Rails 14.2](https://github.com/shakacode/react_on_rails) 📰 Classifieds 🐌 [If your Rails team needs a little boost…](https://sinaptia.dev/services/staff-augmentation/) We can augment your team with devs to help you keep up with your delivery schedule. [Test us!](https://sinaptia.dev/services/staff-augmentation/) --- Tired of vehicle data that's older than the last movie franchise reboot? [CarsXE:](https://api.carsxe.com/?utm_source=Cooper+Press&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Cooper-press-mar-6) Fresh data, daily. (Except Sunday, I need a day off. JK!). [Get Fresh Data Now!](https://api.carsxe.com/?utm_source=Cooper+Press&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Cooper-press-mar-6) 📢 Elsewhere A quick roundup of some of other interesting updates or useful resources in the broader developer landscape: - The term 'Ajax' was coined twenty years ago [in this article.](https://web.archive.org/web/20080302121152/http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php) I still remember the early experiments of using `XMLHttpRequest` in Rails apps! - [Support for functions is coming to CSS](https://css-tricks.com/functions-in-css/) and can already be experimented with in Chrome Canary. - [free-for.dev](https://free-for.dev/#/) is a handy and huge (over 1000 items) list of hosted tools and online services with free developer tiers. - 🤯 [Pierre](https://pierre.co/) is one of the most 'intensively designed' Web sites I've encountered in a long while.. - [TypeScript 5.8](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-5-8/) has been released. Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/cooperx86) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict). Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email](https://rubyweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or [Stop getting this newsletter.](https://rubyweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom Other weekly newsletters we publish include [Postgres Weekly](https://postgresweekly.com/), [React Status](https://react.statuscode.com/), [Frontend Focus](https://frontendfoc.us/), and [JavaScript Weekly](https://javascriptweekly.com/).