Windows probably - Instant Rails?
Why don’t you use script/server for development?
How long does it take if you do:
ruby -v
I'm running Windows inside of Parallels on a Macbook Pro and Rails is
plenty perky (I hand installed everything, but I don't imagine it's
much different).
Gee... So it has nothing to do with InstantRails.
On my machine, the first invocation (again, a Macbook Pro and Parallels, so yours should be faster) took less than one second. All subsequent ones were instant (the EXE was cached, I presume). If just running ruby -v takes 3 seconds, it's no wonder you're not achieving good performance starting a whole server.
I can tell you that a couple of old Dells I have lying around gathering dust achieve good speed despite being pretty old technology. If you lots of stuff in your working set, consider shutting some of it down. This would be true on any machine. If Windows indexing service is running, take it out in the yard and shoot it. If you have Google Desktop installed, take it out in the yard too. Do the same.
I don't know what else to say. Running a command line tool like Ruby should be pretty snappy.
Give it a shot. No way should you be getting such crummy performance.
If you’re seeing scripts take 3 seconds to come up, that’s normal. Anything longer and there’s something really wrong with your machine.
Ruby on Windows is notoriously slower than on Mac or Linux, but it’s manageable.
I would avoid InstantRails for development on Windows, personally. The One-Click installer is perfectly fine.
Try this:
Delete c:\ruby
Install one cliick ruby installer (be sure to get the latest one)
After installation, open a new command prompt
Update rubygems
gem update --system
After that, install Rails
gem install rails --include-dependencies
Now run the Rails command
rails mytestapp
If you’re still experiencing problems, let me know. You might also be interested in checking out the O’Reilly shortcut I wrote that details a Windows installation.
It sounds to me like something else is going on. Create a brand-new Rails application and start up the server
rails foo cd foo ruby script/server
Now open up the task manager so you can see the processes
Does the Ruby process consume a lot of RAM or use a lot of CPU?
Can you identify any other running programs such as virus scanners, etc that might be goofing with the process? I’ve seen some security suites cause problems with the Ruby interpreter on Windows.
Do this also:
ruby -v
It should say 1.8.6. Does it?
ok… so it just cranks away.
Have you blown it all away and reinstalled like I suggested?
When you launch script\server… is there any other service that goes nuts?
This is interesting to me… if you want to take the discussion off list, contact me directly. I’ve not seen this problem before under these specific circumstances. Shoot me an email and I’ll help you troubleshoot it further.