rinda

Rinda is a Ruby library that implements a distributed tuple space, inspired by the Linda coordination language. It allows multiple processes, potentially on different machines, to communicate and synchronize by placing and retrieving data tuples in a shared space.

Rinda operates in a client–server fashion. A server process exposes a tuple space object via DRb (Distributed Ruby); clients connect to the server and perform operations such as write, read, and take. Tuples are typically represented as arrays, and pattern matching uses nil values as wildcards. For example, a pattern like ['task', nil, 'pending'] matches any tuple whose first element is 'task' and third element 'pending', regardless of the middle element.

The typical workflow is a simple coordination pattern: producers write tuples representing work or events; workers use read or take with a matching pattern to retrieve tasks. take removes the tuple from the space, ensuring exclusive processing, while read returns a matching tuple without removing it. The system can block waiting for a match or return nil/timeout depending on the API usage.

Rinda is designed to be lightweight and is part of Ruby's standard library for DRb-based distributed programming. It is not a persistence mechanism; tuples live in memory on the server unless an external persistence layer is added. It is suitable for coordinating small to moderate-scale Ruby applications and for teaching distributed computing concepts.

See also Linda, DRb, Ruby standard library.