Build a Cloud in Thirteen Years

 Infrastructure Control Planes in Ruby, 2011 to 2024

https://slides.com/fdrfdr

Hello

Daniel Farina, a founder of Ubicloud

  • A new IaaS, compare AWS, Azure, GCP
  • An Open Source Ruby Program
  • Focused on core products
  • A better value: a 10-30% the price

What is it?

Practice Makes Perfect...ish

Ubicloud's code is the latest in a progression:

 Crunchy Data

 Citus Data

 Heroku Department of Data

Acknowledgements Will Leinweber and Craig Kerstiens of {Heroku,Citus,Crunchy} without whom this would have been impossible.

    ...and to Peter van Hardenberg, who stands at the beginning.

The Talk

  1. Roda HTTP Routing
  2. Why Ruby?

Roda

"Routing Tree" Framework

 

The "tree" takes the form of nested blocks.

 

Elegant "before" filters

 

Matchers accept literal values and simple data types.

class App < Roda
  route do |r|
    # Matches "/items/<whatever>"
    r.on "items" do
      # Matches /items/[0-9]+$
      r.is Integer do |item_id|
        @item = Item[item_id]

        # e.g. GET /items/123
        r.get { "Rendering item: #{@item}" }
        
        # e.g. DELETE /items/123
        r.delete { @item.destroy }
      end
    end

    # Matches /foo, /foo/bar, /pear/apple/peach
    r.on String do |a_prefix|
      r.get { "You asked for #{a_prefix}" }
    end
  end
end

class CloverWeb < Roda
  # [...Lots of plugin setup...]

  route do |r|
    r.public
    r.assets

    r.on "webhook" do
      r.hash_branches(:webhook_prefix)
    end
    check_csrf!

    @current_user = Account[rodauth.session_value]
    r.rodauth
    rodauth.load_memory
    rodauth.check_active_session
 
    r.root do
      r.redirect rodauth.login_route
    end
    rodauth.require_authentication

    r.hash_branches("")
  end
end

Ubicloud "Web" Top Level

class CloverWeb
  hash_branch("project") do |r|
    @serializer = Serializers::Web::Project

    r.get true do
      @projects = serialize(@current_user.projects.filter(&:visible))

      view "project/index"
    end

    r.post true do
      project = @current_user.create_project_with_default_policy(r.params["name"], provider: r.params["provider"])

      r.redirect project.path
    end

"Leaf" Level

  • still "CloverWeb" (one class, many files)
  • hash_branch jumps to the matching block
  • runs more familiar Roda code
./clover_web.rb:class CloverWeb < Roda
./routes/web/project.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/github.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/github.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/user.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/vm.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/billing.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/policy.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/private_subnet.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/location/vm.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/location/private_subnet.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/location/postgres.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/postgres.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/project/location.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/account.rb:class CloverWeb
./routes/web/webhook/github.rb:class CloverWeb

How many reopenings?

Lots is okay

Why do things that way?

Why Ruby?

2011

Ruby 🔥
Sequel 💧

Sinatra 💧

Postgres 💧

2024

Ruby 💧

Sequel 💧

 

Postgres 🔥

Roda ❄️

Rodauth ❄️

Perspective outside Rails

Legend: "normalness" in descending order 🔥💧❄️

Reinterpreting Ruby

Common Interpretations

inspired, artistic, beautiful
"productive"

"developer happiness"
slow

wild or unprincipled

hard to maintain
good for prototyping, but

Reinterpretation

Stable

Rigorous

Prudent

Restrained

Economical
...slowish

Language Stability and Restraint

  • 2011: Start writing Ruby: Sequel, Sinatra
  • 2013: Ruby 2.0 adds keyword arguments
  • 2016: Ruby 3x3 initiative begins
  • 2021: YJIT in Ruby

Stability in Key Libraries

2007: Sequel

2014: Roda

2015: Rodauth

Jeremy Evans

Maintains all of:

Not only an acknowledgement.

The three programs are cohesive.

  Roda: request routing

  Rodauth: authentication

  Sequel: database access

He has presentations on all three

Jeremy's Humility

Blink and you'll miss something important in his talks.

...it gives me a sense of accomplishment to be able to fix bugs in Ruby that have been known but unfixed for many years. That's a situation that doesn't happen in my other open source projects.

—From one tiny corner of an interview

Fact Check: TRUE

Monthly(?!) Releases

Plugins

Check out

roda-sequel-stack

Rigorous Testing

100% branch coverage: totally reasonable

can be done with rspec or minitest.

Are tests a crutch for lack of

static typing?

no...

if you seek the highest standards of a rigorous program

Is static typing interesting?

Probably, for cross referencing

 

VSCode & LSP are prime movers here

 

Improve economy of elimination of simple defects

Rigor & Economy

in Operations

REPL is Key

Ad hoc Reporting in REPL

Ruby is much better at this than similar languages.

Why?

Blocks.

The End/Conclusion

Build a Cloud in Thirteen Years

By fdrfdr

Build a Cloud in Thirteen Years

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