nushell/crates/nu-cmd-lang
Devyn Cairns bc19be25b1
Keep plugins persistently running in the background (#12064)
# Description
This PR uses the new plugin protocol to intelligently keep plugin
processes running in the background for further plugin calls.

Running plugins can be seen by running the new `plugin list` command,
and stopped by running the new `plugin stop` command.

This is an enhancement for the performance of plugins, as starting new
plugin processes has overhead, especially for plugins in languages that
take a significant amount of time on startup. It also enables plugins
that have persistent state between commands, making the migration of
features like dataframes and `stor` to plugins possible.

Plugins are automatically stopped by the new plugin garbage collector,
configurable with `$env.config.plugin_gc`:

```nushell
  $env.config.plugin_gc = {
      # Configuration for plugin garbage collection
      default: {
          enabled: true # true to enable stopping of inactive plugins
          stop_after: 10sec # how long to wait after a plugin is inactive to stop it
      }
      plugins: {
          # alternate configuration for specific plugins, by name, for example:
          #
          # gstat: {
          #     enabled: false
          # }
      }
  }
```

If garbage collection is enabled, plugins will be stopped after
`stop_after` passes after they were last active. Plugins are counted as
inactive if they have no running plugin calls. Reading the stream from
the response of a plugin call is still considered to be activity, but if
a plugin holds on to a stream but the call ends without an active
streaming response, it is not counted as active even if it is reading
it. Plugins can explicitly disable the GC as appropriate with
`engine.set_gc_disabled(true)`.

The `version` command now lists plugin names rather than plugin
commands. The list of plugin commands is accessible via `plugin list`.

Recommend doing this together with #12029, because it will likely force
plugin developers to do the right thing with mutability and lead to less
unexpected behavior when running plugins nested / in parallel.

# User-Facing Changes
- new command: `plugin list`
- new command: `plugin stop`
- changed command: `version` (now lists plugin names, rather than
commands)
- new config: `$env.config.plugin_gc`
- Plugins will keep running and be reused, at least for the configured
GC period
- Plugins that used mutable state in weird ways like `inc` did might
misbehave until fixed
- Plugins can disable GC if they need to
- Had to change plugin signature to accept `&EngineInterface` so that
the GC disable feature works. #12029 does this anyway, and I'm expecting
(resolvable) conflicts with that

# Tests + Formatting
- 🟢 `toolkit fmt`
- 🟢 `toolkit clippy`
- 🟢 `toolkit test`
- 🟢 `toolkit test stdlib`

Because there is some specific OS behavior required for plugins to not
respond to Ctrl-C directly, I've developed against and tested on both
Linux and Windows to ensure that works properly.

# After Submitting
I think this probably needs to be in the book somewhere
2024-03-09 17:10:22 -06:00
..
src Keep plugins persistently running in the background (#12064) 2024-03-09 17:10:22 -06:00
build.rs Cratification: Break out nu_cmd_lang into a separate crate (#8181) 2023-02-24 09:54:42 -06:00
Cargo.toml Bump version to 0.91.1 (#12085) 2024-03-06 23:08:14 +01:00
LICENSE Fix rest of license year ranges (#8727) 2023-04-04 09:03:29 +12:00
README.md nu-cmd-lang readme (#9446) 2023-06-15 08:45:23 -07:00

nu-cmd-lang

the base language and command crate of nu

The commands in this crate are the core commands of the nu language. It is also the base crate upon which all other command crates sit on top of including:

  • nu-command
  • nu-cli
  • nu-cmd-dataframe
  • nu-cmd-extra

As time goes on and the nu language develops further in parallel with nushell we will be adding other command crates to the system.

What does it mean to be a base crate ?

A base crate is one with minimal dependencies in our system so that other developers can come along and use this crate without having a lot of baggage in terms of other crates which will bloat their underlying application.

Background on nu-cmd-lang

This crate was designed to be a small, concise set of tools or commands that serve as the foundation layer of both nu and nushell. These are the core commands needed to have a nice working version of the nu language without all of the support that the other commands provide inside nushell. Prior to the launch of this crate all of our commands were housed in the crate nu-command. Moving forward we would like to slowly break out the commands in nu-command into different crates; the naming and how this will work and where all the commands will be located is a "work in progress" especially now that the standard library is starting to become more popular as a location for commands. As time goes on some of our commands written in rust will be migrated to nu and when this happens they will be moved into the standard library.