RUBICON

Rubicon is a set of classes, structures, enums, extensions, tools, and utilities to make Swift development easier, cleaner, and less verbose.

API Documentation

Documentation of the API can be found here: Rubion API

Why the name Rubicon?

To cross the Rubicon is a metaphor which means to take an irrevocable step that commits one to a specific course. When Julius Caesar was about to cross the tiny Rubicon River in 49 B.C.E., he quoted from a play by Menander to say "anerriphtho kybos!" or "let the die be cast" in Greek.

Gill, N.S. "Meaning Behind the Phrase to Cross the Rubicon." ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/meaning-cross-the-rubicon-117548.

Swifty Stuff

Here's just a few of the places where I've taken advantage of Swift's features.

NSRecursiveLock -> RecursiveLock

Even though they've included a version of NSRecursiveLock in the open source version of Swift I still get nervous that one day all the NS* classes will suddenly disappear. So I created a wrapper around NSRecursiveLock called simply "RecursiveLock". That way if I suddenly have to recreate it at least I won't have to rename it.

Also as part of RecursiveLock I've create a method called:

func withLock<T>(_ lambda: () throws -> T) rethrows -> T

So that rather than the standard design pattern of:

do {
    lock.lock()
    defer { lock.unlock() }
    /* Do something here. */
}

We can now just do this:

lock.withLock {
    /* Do something here. */
}

It will even allow returned values and throws.

let val = try lock.withLock {
    try iReturnAValueOrThrowAnError()
}

NSCondition -> Conditional

For the same reasons as above I created a wrapper around NSCondition called simply "Conditional".

Also, along with the withLock(_:) method above, I've also included a new method called:

public func withLockWait<T>(broadcastBeforeWait: Bool = false, _ cond: () -> Bool, do block: () throws -> T) rethrows -> T

This method takes two enclosures. One to test the condition and the other to execute once the condition is met.

So instead of saying:

do {
    lock.lock()
    defer {
        lock.broadcast()
        lock.unlock()
    }
    while !someCondition() {
        lock.wait()
    }
    /* Do something here! */
}

You can now simply say this:

lock.withLockWait {
    someCondition()
} do: {
    /* Do something here! */
}

So much more clear!

If you need to call broadcast() before calling wait() then simply pass true to broadcastBeforeWait: like so:

lock.withLockWait(broadcastBeforeWait: true) {
    someCondition()
} do: {
    /* Do something here! */
}

That would be the same as:

do {
    lock.lock()
    defer {
        lock.broadcast()
        lock.unlock()
    }
    while !someCondition() {
        lock.broadcast()
        lock.wait()
    }
    /* Do something here! */
}

Also, the version of withLock(_:) in Conditional calls broadcast() right before it calls unlock().