The old code only caught `StandardError`, which doesn't include
`NotImplementedError`. Despite the name, this error indicates a failure
of low-level OS interaction rather than unimplemented user code.
Any errors not caught by this section will cause the server to
terminate, which is generally undesirable because it might be happily
handling other requests.
`require-relative` breaks Rubygems' ability to use the arch-specific
directory in `extensions`. When building grpc extensions from source,
we're left with a lot of intermediate object files and a duplicate
shared object file as well. This space can be reclaimed by finding these
object files inside the `gems` subdirectory of the installation
location, while leaving the shared object file in the `extensions`
subdirectory. See the comments at
https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/issues/926 for more on this
behavior, which has been present in Rubygems for years.
By using `require` instead, those of us who build from source can
reclaim space consumed by duplicate and intermediate files, which
amounts to a savings of 46MB (in a build of 1.3.2 on Alpine
Linux). This is helpful when trying to minimize the size of a Docker
image.
I'm unclear on whether or not the reclaiming of this space can be
automated as part of the build process. If so, it may be worth
considering as a separate effort.
Mehrdad Afshari
Ken Payson
Alex Polcyn
Nicolas "Pixel" Noble
murgatroid99
Shaun McCormick
Jan Tattermusch
David Garcia Quintas
John Millikin
Ernie Miller
Stanley Cheung