ruby / ruby/psych

Singleton Classes Aren't round-trippable

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Dominant language
Ruby
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

require "psych"
require "singleton"

class A
  include Singleton
end

YAML.unsafe_load(A.instance.to_yaml

result:

/Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb:408:in `revive': private method `allocate' called for A:Class (NoMethodError)

        s = register(node, klass.allocate)
                                ^^^^^^^^^
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb:215:in `visit_Psych_Nodes_Mapping'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/visitor.rb:30:in `visit'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/visitor.rb:6:in `accept'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb:35:in `accept'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb:320:in `visit_Psych_Nodes_Document'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/visitor.rb:30:in `visit'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/visitor.rb:6:in `accept'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb:35:in `accept'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych/nodes/node.rb:50:in `to_ruby'
	from /Users/cody/.gem/ruby/3.1.3/gems/psych-5.1.1/lib/psych.rb:274:in `unsafe_load'

I would expect a Singleton class to both a) not actually serialize any instance variables, and b) upon deserialization, just use the existing instance. Singleton does this when using Marshal, but Marshal is part of Ruby core. And Psych does not provide any way for a class to control allocation when coming from YAML the way that Marshal can, so even if the argument is that Singleton should control its own destiny (by implementing encode_with), Psych needs to provide a way to customize object allocation (without having to override allocate, which might make things complicated for allocating objects "normally").

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction

Reproduce the Singleton example with YAML.unsafe_load, then read psych/visitors/to_ruby.rb around revive and the reported klass.allocate call. Compare the behavior with Singleton's Marshal handling and determine how allocation customization should work. Done means singleton instances round-trip without serializing instance variables and deserialization reuses the existing instance.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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