Speeding up rails boot time in development?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I recently switched from REE to ruby 1.9.2 and I was shocked by how long it takes for rails to startup. This isn't as much of an issue in production, but in development and test environments it's almost unusable because it's killing my workflow.

for example, sometimes I need to run a single test or play around in the console. I've made sure I'm only loading gems I need and I've switched to the RVM patched version of 1.9.2 which is a big help. I'm also using spork for my tests. However, it still takes 20 + seconds to load a console. Also, spork is fantastic for unit and functional tests but can't be used for integration tests because spork requires config.cache_classes to be set to false, but integration tests are painfully slow with that setting.

Is there anything else I can do to speed up the startup time, especially in the development environment?

2

Evan,

I have actually been struggling with the same thing, but I didn’t know about spork. I just installed it and it looks like it does save quite a bit of time to run single tests.

Sorry I don’t have any help for you, but thanks for posting!

3

I have stuck with ruby 1.8.7 for exactly this reason. There was a thread on rails core about this [1] but I do not know if anything came of it.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core/browse_thread/thread/88519ef5a53088a1/c01ba447c6dc0de7?lnk=raot&pli=1

Colin

4

Hey Evan,

I'm having the same issues, but I thought I'd add my query to yours so we can both get responses (hopefully).

In essence, I recently started a contract with a company who is running with cache_classes = true in their dev environment. The result is that you end up having to restart the dev server and then waiting 20-30 seconds for it all to load before you can see any changes.

To me this is atrocious, and I'm looking for ideas on how to minimize this.

One idea I've had is to come up with a way to specify 2-3 files that get reloaded on every request, but only those files. It's not a great solution, but it would solve my immediate problem. I'm not sure how to go about it, but I'm considering trying to abuse require_dependency if possible.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to speed this up in the dev environment, or ideas for other areas to look into for speeding up the dev cycle? As is, this killing productivity.

5

I recently switched from REE to ruby 1.9.2 and I was shocked by how

long it takes for rails to startup. This isn’t as much of an issue in

production, but in development and test environments it’s almost

unusable because it’s killing my workflow.

for example, sometimes I need to run a single test or play around in

the console. I’ve made sure I’m only loading gems I need and I’ve

switched to the RVM patched version of 1.9.2 which is a big help.

I’m also using spork for my tests. However, it still takes 20 +

seconds to load a console. Also, spork is fantastic for unit and

functional tests but can’t be used for integration tests because spork

requires config.cache_classes to be set to false, but integration

tests are painfully slow with that setting.

Is there anything else I can do to speed up the startup time,

especially in the development environment?

Hi, on my system, it takes 5 - 7 seconds to start the web server. BTW, I’m using Mac OS and thin web server. Next, I would make sure that spork is properly setup on your system. Also, if you haven’t installed autotest, then I would recommend getting this properly installed as well. If you’re using RSpec, then make sure that .rspec contains the following at an absolute minimum:

–drb

How are you running spork from the command? If you’re using bundler within your Rails project, you should be starting spark as follows:

bundle exec spork

Also, if you’re doing TDD/BDD, then you’ll be spending the majority of your time doing the following:

a) writing a failing test

b) implementing the code that makes the test pass

c) refactoring

d) goto (a)

If you’re using Rails 3, you can find an excellent walk through here for getting your environment setup.

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/static-pages#sec:TDD

Last but not least, I would check the overall performance of the underlying hardware because this can be one of the variables for contributing to the slowness within your application startup.

Good luck,

-Conrad