Loading `debug` gem breaks `blankslate` gem

Open
#757 5 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
ruby
Domain
devtools

Research direction

Reproduce the interaction using the Ruby 2.7.2 and debug 1.6.2 environment described, then inspect lib/debug/session.rb around lines 1686-1689. Compare behavior with and without requiring debug, and verify the BlankSlate example remains compatible while determining the purpose of the redefinition.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug

Your environment

  • ruby -v: ruby 2.7.2p137 (2020-10-01 revision 5445e04352) [x86_64-linux]
  • rdbg -v: rdbg 1.6.2

Describe the bug

The debug gem undefines and redefines singleton_method_added.

The blankslate gem provides a "abstract base class with no predefined methods" except for some core Ruby builtins. "BlankSlate is useful as a base class when writing classes that depend upon method_missing (e.g. dynamic proxies)", so it only works if singleton_method_added is available. However, it hides singleton_method_added because it's redefined by the debug gem.

This problem does not occur when the debug gem is not required.

To Reproduce

require 'debug'
require 'blankslate'

BlankSlate.new.singleton_method_added

Buggy output -- the method isn't defined:

Traceback (most recent call last):
repro.rb:4:in `<main>': undefined method `singleton_method_added' for #<BlankSlate:0x000055a654b12fb0> (NoMethodError)

Expected behavior

The method is defined, but private:

Traceback (most recent call last):
repro.rb:3:in `<main>': private method `singleton_method_added' called for #<BlankSlate:0x000055d758dcd540> (NoMethodError)

Workaround

We can work around the bug by explicilty unhiding this method, or by requiring blankslate before debug:

BlankSlate.reveal(:singleton_method_added)

Additional context

The problem is caused by this code in the debug gem:

https://github.com/ruby/debug/blob/19b4dde3308f532943e4234d1588d4fa26c52345/lib/debug/session.rb#L1686-L1689

Why does the debug gem redefine this method?

Dominant language
Ruby
Stars
1.3k
Forks
146
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from ruby/debug

All issues in ruby/debug

Similar issues

More Ruby issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.