Steep - Gradual Typing for Ruby

Installation

Install via RubyGems.

$ gem install steep

Requirements

Steep requires Ruby 2.6 or later.

Usage

Steep does not infer types from Ruby programs, but requires declaring types and writing annotations. You have to go on the following three steps.

0. steep init

Run steep init to generate a configuration file.

$ steep init       # Generates Steepfile

Edit the Steepfile:

target :app do
  check "lib"
  signature "sig"

  library "pathname"
end

1. Declare Types

Declare types in .rbs files in sig directory.

class Person
  @name: String
  @contacts: Array[Email | Phone]

  def initialize: (name: String) -> untyped
  def name: -> String
  def contacts: -> Array[Email | Phone]
  def guess_country: -> (String | nil)
end

class Email
  @address: String

  def initialize: (address: String) -> untyped
  def address: -> String
end

class Phone
  @country: String
  @number: String

  def initialize: (country: String, number: String) -> untyped
  def country: -> String
  def number: -> String

  def self.countries: -> Hash[String, String]
end

• You can use simple generics, like Hash[String, String].
• You can use union types, like Email | Phone.
• You have to declare not only public methods but also private methods and instance variables.
• You can declare singleton methods, like self.countries.
• There is nil type to represent nullable types.

2. Write Ruby Code

Write Ruby code with annotations.

class Person
  # `@dynamic` annotation is to tell steep that
  # the `name` and `contacts` methods are defined without def syntax.
  # (Steep can skip checking if the methods are implemented.)

  # @dynamic name, contacts
  attr_reader :name
  attr_reader :contacts

  def initialize(name:)
    @name = name
    @contacts = []
  end

  def guess_country()
    contacts.map do |contact|
      # With case expression, simple type-case is implemented.
      # `contact` has type of `Phone | Email` but in the `when` clause, contact has type of `Phone`.
      case contact
      when Phone
        contact.country
      end
    end.compact.first
  end
end

class Email
  # @dynamic address
  attr_reader :address

  def initialize(address:)
    @address = address
  end

  def ==(other)
    # `other` has type of `untyped`, which means type checking is skipped.
    # No type errors can be detected in this method.
    other.is_a?(self.class) && other.address == address
  end

  def hash
    [self.class, address].hash
  end
end

class Phone
  # @dynamic country, number
  attr_reader :country, :number

  def initialize(country:, number:)
    @country = country
    @number = number
  end

  def ==(other)
    # You cannot use `case` for type case because `other` has type of `untyped`, not a union type.
    # You have to explicitly declare the type of `other` in `if` expression.

    if other.is_a?(Phone)
      # @type var other: Phone
      other.country == country && other.number == number
    end
  end

  def hash
    [self.class, country, number].hash
  end
end

3. Type Check

Run steep check command to type check. 💡

$ steep check
lib/phone.rb:46:0: MethodDefinitionMissing: module=::Phone, method=self.countries (class Phone)

You now find Phone.countries method is not implemented yet. 🙃

Prototyping signature

You can use rbs prototype command to generate a signature declaration.

$ rbs prototype rb lib/person.rb lib/email.rb lib/phone.rb
class Person
  @name: untyped
  @contacts: Array[untyped]
  def initialize: (name: untyped) -> Array[untyped]
  def guess_country: () -> untyped
end

class Email
  @address: untyped
  def initialize: (address: untyped) -> untyped
  def ==: (untyped) -> untyped
  def hash: () -> untyped
end

class Phone
  @country: untyped
  @number: untyped
  def initialize: (country: untyped, number: untyped) -> untyped
  def ==: (untyped) -> void
  def hash: () -> untyped
end

It prints all methods, classes, instance variables, and constants. It can be a good starting point to writing signatures.

Because it just prints all defs, you may find some odd points:

• The type of initialize in Person looks strange.
• There are no attr_reader methods extracted.

Generally, these are by our design.

rbs prototype offers options: rbi to generate prototype from Sorbet RBI and runtime to generate from runtime API.

Guides

There are some guides in the guide directory. I know we need more comprehensive set of documentations. Just started writing docs.

• Guides

Examples

You can find examples in smoke directory.

IDEs

Steep implements some of the Language Server Protocol features.

• For VSCode please install the plugin.
• For SublimeText please install LSP package and follow instructions.
• For Vim or Neovim please install ALE. You may want to let g:ale_ruby_steep_executable = 'bundle' to use your bundled steep version.

Other LSP supporting tools may work with Steep where it starts the server as steep langserver.

Rake Tasks

Steep comes with a set of configurable Rake tasks.

# Rakefile

require "steep/rake_task"
Steep::RakeTask.new do |t|
  t.check.severity_level = :error
  t.watch.verbose
end

task default: [:steep]

Use bundle exec rake -T to see all available tasks.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/soutaro/steep.