Question

I am working with a database via IRB, and I would like to make periodic changes in the database (e.g., every 10 sec) showing the log in STDOUT.

Also, I would like to have manual control being able to change the database and to stop the first process.

So far I came up to the following

def start
  stop
  @running = Thread.new do
    loop do
      fork do
        puts 'change the database'
      end
      sleep 10
    end
  end
  nil
end

def stop
  @running.kill if @running
end

However, this is not running every 10 sec unless I enter something in the main IRB thread.

How to make it working?

Answer 1

Some versions of readline on OSX are blocking. If one experiences the behavior you described, they can disable readline by putting

IRB.conf[:USE_READLINE] = false

in .irbrc