Does process exit when the main thread ends?

Question

I'm new to Ruby and quick googling of the question did not give a result. For this case it is relatively easy to code a test, however it might be worth to ask it here to get an authoritative answer.

Consider scenario: in a ruby application invoked from command line the main thread creates and starts worker threads. Worker threads perform long computations. A method of the main thread does not wait for anything and simply completes after spawning workers.

Will the process exit and worker threads be terminated after the main thread exits?
Is there a documentation describing this behavior?

Answer 1

As long as these threads are daemon threads, then they will exit along with your program. There is documentation regarding the exiting of threads (although its short) here. However, if your looking for processes to stay around after being spawned by another process (and the corresponding process ending), then you should look at a multi-processing gem or library suited for the task.