Ruby Static Typing with Sorbet

1 post · Jun 2020 – Dec 2020

What this trail covers

Shopify has adopted and is scaling the use of Sorbet for static typing in its Ruby codebase. This involves addressing challenges with metaprogramming, ActiveSupport::Concern, and inclusion requirements. The team is also exploring the relationship between Sorbet, RBS, and Tapioca for generating type signatures. The focus is on gradual adoption, starting with `typed: false` files and moving towards `typed: true`, prioritizing frequently reused or error-prone files. Generated RBI files are checked.

All Shopify trails

Dec 2020The State of Ruby Static Typing at Shopify - ShopifyThis post details Shopify's journey and ongoing efforts in adopting Sorbet for static typing in its large Ruby monolith. It outlines challenges encountered with metaprogramming and module inclusions, explains how Sorbet handles typed arrays and complex types, and compares Sorbet's benefits to TypeScript. It also discusses the relationship with RBS and Tapioca, scenarios where Sorbet might not be ideal, editor standardization, and the initial steps for adopting Sorbet in a Rails project, including which files to check into the repository. The post also touches upon the challenges with Ruby GraphQL libraries and the roadmap for RBI to RBS conversion.
Nov 2020Adopting Sorbet at Scale - ShopifyThis post details the process of scaling Sorbet adoption across Shopify's monolith, moving from no Sorbet to almost full coverage in a few months. It introduces and elaborates on the open-source tooling developed to facilitate this: RuboCop Sorbet for enforcing Sorbet compatibility and styling, Tapioca for generating RBI files for gems and DSLs, and Spoom for programmatic interaction with Sorbet. The post also shares lessons learned, including the importance of avoiding `typed: ignore` and the benefits realized even at `typed: false` (e.g., catching `NameErrors`). It presents a controlled experiment on the `dev` tool to measure the impact of typing on production errors.
Nov 2020Static Typing for Ruby - ShopifyThis post details Shopify's journey in adopting Sorbet for static typing in its large Ruby monolith. It outlines the key requirements for a typing solution (gradual typing, speed, full Ruby support), the evaluation process of Sorbet, and the strategy for tracking adoption using SorbetMetrics. It also discusses scaling support for developers through internal platforms and measuring developer happiness via surveys and interviews. The current state shows 80% of files typed at `typed: true` or higher, with significant progress in typed calls and signatures.
Jun 2020Writing Better, Type-safe Code with Sorbet - ShopifyThis post details the adoption of Sorbet for static type checking in Ruby codebases, highlighting four key benefits: type-safe method calls by providing clear return types and catching nil dereferences; type-safety for complex data types by defining typed structs for input and output, ensuring field existence and correct value types; type-safe polymorphism and duck typing using Sorbet interfaces to enforce contracts between components in a hexagonal architecture; and support for gradual refactoring by allowing file-by-file adoption with configurable strictness levels. The post emphasizes how type safety catches errors that unit tests might miss and encourages adherence to design patterns.
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