[ANN] Mongrel 0.1.1 -- A Fast Ruby Web Server (It Works Now, Maybe)

ruby-talk
21

Zed-

  I'm still getting a timeout error even with the new version. Am I doing something wrong here?

root@grunt:~/mongrel-0.1.1# rake
(in /home/ez/mongrel-0.1.1)
make
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
cp ext/http11/http11.so lib
/usr/local/bin/ruby -Ilib:test "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.6.2/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb" "test/test_http11.rb" "test/test_trie.rb" "test/test_ws.rb"
Loaded suite /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.6.2/lib/rake/rake_test_loader
Started
Error result after 6 bytes of 15
.Read 18 string was 18
...Hitting server
E
Finished in 190.974664 seconds.

   1) Error:
test_simple_server(WSTest):
Errno::ETIMEDOUT: Connection timed out - connect(2)
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `initialize'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `connect'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `connect'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:555:in `do_start'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:544:in `start'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:379:in `get_response'
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:356:in `get'
     ./test/test_ws.rb:28:in `test_simple_server'

5 tests, 8 assertions, 0 failures, 1 errors
rake aborted!
Command failed with status (1): [/usr/local/bin/ruby -Ilib:test "/usr/local...]

root@grunt:~/mongrel-0.1.1# ruby -v
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i686-linux]

Cheers-
-Ezra Zygmuntowicz
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
http://yakimaherald.com
ezra@yakima-herald.com
blog: http://brainspl.at

22

One thing, could you do the same test against WEBrick using the examples/webrick_compare.rb script? Just for my info. You'll need to > /dev/null the output to make the test more fair.

Alright, here you go.

first Mongrel:
...
Requests per second: 514.47 [#/sec] (mean)

and WEBrick started with
...
Requests per second: 84.70 [#/sec] (mean)

That's great. The performance is consistently better.

These results are very promising. I bet if you can manage to make a native win32 version the results will double or triple. A 5 times boost will even make Cygwin a viable development environment. I suspect that the win32 version will even be fast enough for production.

Yes, I'm gonna have to really investigate a native win32 one. If it's this fast, and the features are there, it'll be the easiest way possible. Only thing in win32 that would be missing is basic server stuff like daemonize and so on.

Thanks for the testing.

Zed A. Shaw

···

On Jan 21, 2006, at 7:37 AM, Sascha Ebach wrote:

23

Rails can be run through flat CGI with Apache, but that's really slow
because *every single time* you make a request, the code has to be
reloaded into memory from disk. The step up from this is something like
FastCGI, or SCGI which will keep the code in memory between requests.
The performance is then WAY better, but in development changes you make
to the code won't work until you reload the server. Obviously that's no
good so WEBrick is a lightweight server intended for development use,
which will just reload the parts of the code you change between
requests. It's not recommended for deployment though because it isn't
fast enough.

This is a very good article to read:
http://duncandavidson.com/essay/2005/12/railsdeployment

Hope that helps

Jon

···

On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 02:42 +0900, Jeff Pritchard wrote:

Noob question here.

No intent to impugn Zed's mad skilz or the need for something like
Mongrel. I'm just confused by why it would be common to develop or
deploy a ruby on rails app with something other than production servers
like Apache.

So far, all of the rails demos I have seen are using webrick. This has
been true even for setups like macosx that come with apache already set
up and running.

Does apache not come standard with everything needed to serve a rails
app? If not, is there an add-on module for apache that makes it
rails-savvy?

Or is it the case that all rails apps have to be served by a special
rails server like mongrel or webrick?

--
Jonathan Leighton
http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://jonathanleighton.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/

24

Noob question here.

I like noobs. Especially with BBQ sauce. :slight_smile:

No intent to impugn Zed's mad skilz or the need for something like
Mongrel. I'm just confused by why it would be common to develop or
deploy a ruby on rails app with something other than production servers
like Apache.

Good question. It really comes down to nothing more than the fastest simplest way to serve up a Rails (or Nitro, Camping, IOWA, etc.) application. You've currently got various options:

* CGI -- slow, resource hogging, but works everywhere.
* FastCGI -- Fast, current best practice, a pain in the ass to install and real painful for win32 people.
* SCGI -- Fast, pure ruby (runs everywhere Ruby does), works with a few servers, very simple to install, use, and cluster, good monitoring (warning, I wrote this).
* mod_ruby -- Works but haven't heard of a lot of success with it, couples your app to your web server making upgrades difficult.
* WEBrick -- Runs in pure ruby, easy to deploy, you can put it behind any web server supporting something like mod_proxy. Fairly slow.

Now, the sweet spot would be something that was kind of at the optimal axis of FastCGI, SCGI, and WEBrick:

* Runs everywhere Ruby does and is easy to install and use.
* Fast as hell with very little overhead above the web app framework.
* Uses plain HTTP so that it can sit behind anything that can proxy HTTP. That's apache, lighttpd, IIS, squid, a huge amount of deployment options open up.

This would be where I'm trying to place Mongrel. It's not intended as a replacement for a full web server like Apache, but rather just enough web server to run the app frameworks efficiently as backend processes. Based on my work with SCGI (which will inherit some stuff from Mongrel soon), it will hopefully meet a niche that's not being met right now with the current options.

So far, all of the rails demos I have seen are using webrick. This has
been true even for setups like macosx that come with apache already set
up and running.

Does apache not come standard with everything needed to serve a rails
app? If not, is there an add-on module for apache that makes it
rails-savvy?

Apache or lighttpd are the big ones on Unix systems. When you get over to the win32 camp though lighttpd just don't work, and many people insist on using IIS. In my own experiences, if you can't hook it into a portal or Apache without installing any software then you're dead. Sure this is probably an attempt to stop a disruptive technology, but if there's a solid fast way to deploy using HTTP then that's one more chink in the armor sealed up.

Go talk to someone who's forced to IIS and you'll see why something other than WEBrick is really needed. Actually, WEBrick would be fine if it weren't so damn slow.

Or is it the case that all rails apps have to be served by a special
rails server like mongrel or webrick?

Well, they have to be served by something running Ruby. I know there's people who have tried with mod_ruby, but I haven't heard of a lot of success. I could be wrong on that. Also, many people don't like tightly coupling their applications into their web server.

···

On Jan 22, 2006, at 12:42 PM, Jeff Pritchard wrote:

25

PA ha scritto:

Hey, that was cool. Any chance yo see how would they run with -c 10?

<snip again>

great, thanks for realizing my wish :slight_smile:

···

On Jan 24, 2006, at 16:43, gabriele renzi wrote:

26

PA <petite.abeille@gmail.com> writes:

···

On Jan 24, 2006, at 16:43, gabriele renzi wrote:

Hey, that was cool. Any chance yo see how would they run with -c 10?

[lighttpd]
% lighttpd -v
lighttpd-1.4.9 - a light and fast webserver
% ab -n 10000 -c 10 http://localhost:8888/test.txt
Called sick today (fdevent.c.170: aborted)

Try adding this to lighttpd.conf:

  server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue"

The default handler "poll" is extremely unstable on OS X 10.3.

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

27

You didn't happen to install the previous version did you? Otherwise, try the examples/simpletest.rb and if that works then it might be the test bombing for some reason. Others got it working under Linux, so maybe I'll try to catch you on IRC (#rubyonrails) and troubleshoot with you.

Zed A. Shaw

···

On Jan 20, 2006, at 8:51 PM, Ezra Zygmuntowicz wrote:

Zed-

  I'm still getting a timeout error even with the new version. Am I doing something wrong here?

root@grunt:~/mongrel-0.1.1# rake
(in /home/ez/mongrel-0.1.1)
make
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
cp ext/http11/http11.so lib
/usr/local/bin/ruby -Ilib:test "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.6.2/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb" "test/test_http11.rb" "test/test_trie.rb" "test/test_ws.rb"
Loaded suite /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.6.2/lib/rake/rake_test_loader
Started
Error result after 6 bytes of 15
.Read 18 string was 18
...Hitting server
E
Finished in 190.974664 seconds.

  1) Error:
test_simple_server(WSTest):
Errno::ETIMEDOUT: Connection timed out - connect(2)
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `initialize'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `connect'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:562:in `connect'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:555:in `do_start'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:544:in `start'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:379:in `get_response'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:356:in `get'
    ./test/test_ws.rb:28:in `test_simple_server'

5 tests, 8 assertions, 0 failures, 1 errors
rake aborted!
Command failed with status (1): [/usr/local/bin/ruby -Ilib:test "/usr/local...]

root@grunt:~/mongrel-0.1.1# ruby -v
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i686-linux]

Cheers-
-Ezra Zygmuntowicz
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
http://yakimaherald.com
ezra@yakima-herald.com
blog: http://brainspl.at

28

Zed Shaw <zedshaw@zedshaw.com> writes:

Yes, I'm gonna have to really investigate a native win32 one. If
it's this fast, and the features are there, it'll be the easiest way
possible. Only thing in win32 that would be missing is basic server
stuff like daemonize and so on.

I think there are tools to run any program as service, so that
shouldn't be an issue.

···

Thanks for the testing.

Zed A. Shaw

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

29

Zed Shaw wrote:

snip..

Go talk to someone who's forced to IIS and you'll see why something
other than WEBrick is really needed. Actually, WEBrick would be fine
if it weren't so damn slow.

snip..

Thanks for your work on this. Can you elaborate on what makes Mongrel so
much faster than Webrick? What kind of optimization techniques did you
use to make this faster. Are you using C extensions etc in part to speed
things up. (I guess I'm looking for a bit of a architectural overview
with a webrick arch. comparison to boot if you used that as inspiration)

Just curious! :slight_smile:

-Amr

···

On Jan 22, 2006, at 12:42 PM, Jeff Pritchard wrote:

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

30

Christian Neukirchen wrote:

Zed Shaw <zedshaw@zedshaw.com> writes:

Yes, I'm gonna have to really investigate a native win32 one. If
it's this fast, and the features are there, it'll be the easiest way
possible. Only thing in win32 that would be missing is basic server
stuff like daemonize and so on.

I think there are tools to run any program as service, so that
shouldn't be an issue.

Namely the win32-service package by Daniel Berger

http://rubyforge.org/projects/win32utils/

-Sascha

31

Thanks for your work on this. Can you elaborate on what makes Mongrel so much faster than Webrick? What kind of optimization techniques did you use to make this faster. Are you using C extensions etc in part to speed things up. (I guess I'm looking for a bit of a architectural overview with a webrick arch. comparison to boot if you used that as inspiration)

Just curious! :slight_smile:

Yeah, me too. What I wonder about in specific is why not just rewrite the performance critical parts of webrick in C. That way you would already have the massive amount of features webrick offers without having to duplicate all of this. I wonder if you have been thinking about that and the reason you might have decided against doing it this way.

Just curious, too! :slight_smile:

-Sascha

32

You're going to laugh but right now it's down to a bit of Ruby and a nifty C extension. Seriously. No need yet of much more than some threads that crank on output, a parser (in C) that makes a hash, and a way to quickly lookup URI mappings. The rest is done with handlers that process the result of this. It may get a bit larger than this, but this core will probably be more than enough to at least service basic requests. I'm currently testing out a way to drop the threads in favor of IO.select, but it looks like that messes with threads in some weird ways.

Once I figure out all the nooks and crannies of the thing then I'll do a more formal design, but even then it's going to be ruthlessly simplistic.

Zed A. Shaw

···

On Jan 22, 2006, at 4:07 PM, Amr Malik wrote:

Thanks for your work on this. Can you elaborate on what makes Mongrel so
much faster than Webrick? What kind of optimization techniques did you
use to make this faster. Are you using C extensions etc in part to speed
things up. (I guess I'm looking for a bit of a architectural overview
with a webrick arch. comparison to boot if you used that as inspiration)

33

Well, this may be mean, but have you ever considered that "the massive amount of features webrick offers" is part of the problem? It's difficult to go into a large (or even medium) code base and profile it and then add bolt on performance improvements. It can be done, but it usually ends up as a wart on the system.

So, rather than try to "fix" WEBrick I'm just considering it a different solution to a different set of problems. Mongrel may pick up all the features WEBrick has, but right now it's targeted at just serving Ruby web apps as fast as possible.

Zed A. Shaw

···

On Jan 22, 2006, at 5:10 PM, Sascha Ebach wrote:

Thanks for your work on this. Can you elaborate on what makes Mongrel so much faster than Webrick? What kind of optimization techniques did you use to make this faster. Are you using C extensions etc in part to speed things up. (I guess I'm looking for a bit of a architectural overview with a webrick arch. comparison to boot if you used that as inspiration)
Just curious! :slight_smile:

Yeah, me too. What I wonder about in specific is why not just rewrite the performance critical parts of webrick in C. That way you would already have the massive amount of features webrick offers without having to duplicate all of this. I wonder if you have been thinking about that and the reason you might have decided against doing it this way.

34

Zed Shaw wrote:

You're going to laugh but right now it's down to a bit of Ruby and a
nifty C extension. Seriously. No need yet of much more than some
threads that crank on output, a parser (in C) that makes a hash, and
a way to quickly lookup URI mappings. The rest is done with handlers
that process the result of this.

That's a PATRICIA trie for URL lookup, a finite state machine compiled
Ragel->C->binary for HTTP protocol parsing and an implicit use of
select(2) (via Thread), for the even-more-curious out there :wink: (first
hit on Google for "Ragel" will tell you what you need to know about
that)

It may get a bit larger than this,
but this core will probably be more than enough to at least service
basic requests. I'm currently testing out a way to drop the threads
in favor of IO.select, but it looks like that messes with threads in
some weird ways.

Ok, so here's where I fell off your train. On your Ruby/Event page, you
said that you killed the project b/c Ruby's Thread class multiplexes via
the use of select(2), which undermines libevent's ability to effectively
manage events (which I had discovered while writing some extensions a
while back and thought "how unfortunate"). But I have some questions
about the above:

1. As above, the Thread class uses select(2) (or poll(2)) internally;
what would be the difference in using IO::select explicitly besides more
code to write to manage it all?

2. What are these "weird ways" you keep referring to? I got the
select-hogging-the-event-party thing, but what else?

I am interested b/c I am currently trying to write a microthreading
library for Ruby based on some of the more performing event multiplexing
techniques (kqueue, port_create, epoll, etc) so I can use it for other
stuff I want to write (^_^)

Once I figure out all the nooks and crannies of the thing then I'll
do a more formal design, but even then it's going to be ruthlessly
simplistic.

Simple is good, m'kay? :wink: Great show in any case! I know I'll be using
this for my next internal Rails app.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

35

Well, this may be mean, but have you ever considered that "the massive amount of features webrick offers" is part of the problem? It's difficult to go into a large (or even medium) code base and profile it and then add bolt on performance improvements. It can be done, but it usually ends up as a wart on the system.

So, rather than try to "fix" WEBrick I'm just considering it a different solution to a different set of problems. Mongrel may pick up all the features WEBrick has, but right now it's targeted at just serving Ruby web apps as fast as possible.

I suspected something along those lines :slight_smile: I would probably do the same because starting from the beginning is always more fun than trying to understand a large code base. Although I personally think that the latter doesn't have to be slower. How long could it take to find a dozen slow spots in webrick? Maybe 2-3 days? Another 2-3 days to tune them?

Anyway, I was just curious, and I am looking forward to following along and look and learn from the C code. I personally never had the need for anything to be faster than Ruby *except* the http stuff. But since I have never actually written more than a couple of lines of C I shyed away from starting such a thing.

Another tip: Maybe you want to look at Will Glozer's Cerise.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/cerise/

It has a minimum bare bones http server entirely written in Ruby. Maybe it is of help. Just a thought.

-Sascha

36

Zed Shaw wrote:

You're going to laugh but right now it's down to a bit of Ruby and a
nifty C extension. Seriously. No need yet of much more than some
threads that crank on output, a parser (in C) that makes a hash, and
a way to quickly lookup URI mappings. The rest is done with handlers
that process the result of this.

That's a PATRICIA trie for URL lookup, a finite state machine compiled
Ragel->C->binary for HTTP protocol parsing and an implicit use of
select(2) (via Thread), for the even-more-curious out there :wink: (first
hit on Google for "Ragel" will tell you what you need to know about
that)

Ooohh, *that's* what people want to know. You're right. Here's the main gear involved in the process:

1) Basic Ruby TCPServer is used to create the server socket. No magic here. A thread then just runs in a loop accepting connections.
2) When a client is accepted it's passed to a "client processor". This processor is a single function that runs in a loop doing a readpartial on the socket to get a chunk of data.
3) That chunk's passed to a HTTP parser which makes a Ruby Hash with the CGI vars in it. The parser is written with Ragel 5.2 (which has problems compiling on some systems). This parser is the first key to Mongrel's speed.
4) With a completed HTTP parse, and the body of the request waiting to be processed, Mongrel tries to find the handler for the URI. It does this with a modified trie that returns the handler as well as break the prefix and postfix of the URI into SCRIPT_INFO and PATH_INFO components.
5) Once I've got the handler, the request hash variables, and a request object I just call the "process" method and it does it's work.

Unhandled issues are:

* The trie was written in ruby and isn't all that fast. A trie might also be overkill for what will typically be a few URIs. I was thinking though that the trie would be great for storing cached results and looking them up really fast.
* The thread handling has limitations that make it not quite as efficient as I'd like. For example, I read 2k chunks off the wire and parse them. If the request doesn't fit in the 2k then I have to reset the parser, keep the data, and parse it again. I'd really much rather use a nice ring buffer for this.
* The threads create a ton of objects which can make the GC cause large pauses. I've tried a group of threads waiting on a queue of requests, but that's not much faster or better. So far the fastest is using IO.select (see below).

It may get a bit larger than this,
but this core will probably be more than enough to at least service
basic requests. I'm currently testing out a way to drop the threads
in favor of IO.select, but it looks like that messes with threads in
some weird ways.

Ok, so here's where I fell off your train. On your Ruby/Event page, you
said that you killed the project b/c Ruby's Thread class multiplexes via
the use of select(2), which undermines libevent's ability to effectively
manage events (which I had discovered while writing some extensions a
while back and thought "how unfortunate"). But I have some questions
about the above:

Yes, that's still true since Ruby and libevent don't know about the other. They fight like twenty rabid cats in a pillow case. The main difference is that IO.select knows about Ruby's threads, so it's supposed to be safe to use.

1. As above, the Thread class uses select(2) (or poll(2)) internally;
what would be the difference in using IO::select explicitly besides more
code to write to manage it all?

It does use select transparently, but it seems to add a bunch of overhead to the select processing it uses. I'm sorting out the IO.select and thread relationship.

2. What are these "weird ways" you keep referring to? I got the
select-hogging-the-event-party thing, but what else?

Basically select hogs the party, threads just kind of stop for no reason, select just stops, etc. I really which they'd just use pth so I could get on with my life. :slight_smile: I've been playing with it, and I think I have something that might work.

I am interested b/c I am currently trying to write a microthreading
library for Ruby based on some of the more performing event multiplexing
techniques (kqueue, port_create, epoll, etc) so I can use it for other
stuff I want to write (^_^)

You know, having tried this, I have to say you'll be fighting a losing battle. Ruby's thread implementation just isn't able to work with external multiplexing methods. I couldn't figure it out, so if you do then let me know.

Once I figure out all the nooks and crannies of the thing then I'll
do a more formal design, but even then it's going to be ruthlessly
simplistic.

Simple is good, m'kay? :wink: Great show in any case! I know I'll be using
this for my next internal Rails app.

Thanks!

Zed A. Shaw

···

On Jan 23, 2006, at 9:27 PM, Toby DiPasquale wrote:

37

Zed Shaw wrote:

* The threads create a ton of objects which can make the GC cause
large pauses. I've tried a group of threads waiting on a queue of
requests, but that's not much faster or better. So far the fastest
is using IO.select (see below).

Have you checked to see if your C extension is "leaking" memory by
virtue of Ruby not correctly handling it? This happened to me recently
with a similarly purposed C extension, so much so that I had to do it in
pure C and simply fork/pipe in Ruby to use it. The problem was that my
extension was using ALLOC() and friends for allocation, but Ruby didn't
understand that it could release that memory, even after the usage of
the process was 3GB+. I moved on, but I will eventually get back there
to find out why that was happening...

Yes, that's still true since Ruby and libevent don't know about the
other. They fight like twenty rabid cats in a pillow case. The main
difference is that IO.select knows about Ruby's threads, so it's
supposed to be safe to use.

As far as I understand, at the base of it, IO::select's C handler,
rb_f_select() calls rb_thread_select() to do the actual select'ing. It
appears that there are more functions on top of the rb_thread_select()
when coming at it from the co-op thread scheduling callchain, however.
This would be in line with what you were saying.

2. What are these "weird ways" you keep referring to? I got the
select-hogging-the-event-party thing, but what else?

Basically select hogs the party, threads just kind of stop for no
reason, select just stops, etc. I really which they'd just use pth
so I could get on with my life. :slight_smile: I've been playing with it, and
I think I have something that might work.

Does Ruby spawn Thread objects even when not requested by the
programmer? I seem to remember that GC was in a Thread? Is that right?

If not, can you just not spawn any and avoid these issues altogether
(perhaps alias Thread's new method to raise an exception to make sure it
doesn't happen?)

You know, having tried this, I have to say you'll be fighting a
losing battle. Ruby's thread implementation just isn't able to work
with external multiplexing methods. I couldn't figure it out, so if
you do then let me know.

I'm not at all put off by simply replacing select(2) in the Ruby core
with something else, just so I can get what I need,
[porta|releasa]bility be damned. I know this is not the best solution,
but it might be the fastest. I would really like something I could
gem-ify, though, if at all possible. I thought about trying to work this
into YARV and just use that, but that's nigh-on-unusable at the moment
for other reasons.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

38

Have you tried something like LibHTTPD perhaps?

http://www.hughes.com.au/products/libhttpd/

Cheers

···

On Jan 24, 2006, at 04:51, Zed Shaw wrote:

Ooohh, *that's* what people want to know. You're right. Here's the main gear involved in the process:

--
PA, Onnay Equitursay
http://alt.textdrive.com/

39

Zed Shaw wrote:

> I am interested b/c I am currently trying to write a microthreading
> library for Ruby based on some of the more performing event
> multiplexing...

You know, having tried this, I have to say you'll be fighting a
losing battle. Ruby's thread implementation just isn't able to work
with external multiplexing methods. I couldn't figure it out, so if
you do then let me know.

I've been meaning to ask about this as well ever since I saw you killed
Ruby/Event. In your experience is it only a Bad Idea(tm) to use
poll/libevent in your Ruby app if you'll also be using Threads, or is
it always a bad idea, even if you can guarentee that "require 'thread'"
is never issued?

Also, did you ever get a chance to write a port mortem discussing your
findings and the problems you ran into?

This seems like a fairly major serious problem with Ruby that should
be addressed. Event driven programming really enables the whole
"pieces loosely joined" paradigm. I mean its kind of embarrasing that
the best way to do async programming with Ruby is to use Rails'
javascript libraries. (okay, I'm enough of a web geek to think that
that is actually kind of cool, but we'll ignore that)

Thanks,
kellan

···

On Jan 23, 2006, at 9:27 PM, Toby DiPasquale wrote:

40

In article <43D4C8E8.7000606@digitale-wertschoepfung.de>,

Well, this may be mean, but have you ever considered that "the massive
amount of features webrick offers" is part of the problem? It's
difficult to go into a large (or even medium) code base and profile it
and then add bolt on performance improvements. It can be done, but it
usually ends up as a wart on the system.

So, rather than try to "fix" WEBrick I'm just considering it a different
solution to a different set of problems. Mongrel may pick up all the
features WEBrick has, but right now it's targeted at just serving Ruby
web apps as fast as possible.

I suspected something along those lines :slight_smile: I would probably do the same
because starting from the beginning is always more fun than trying to
understand a large code base. Although I personally think that the latter
doesn't have to be slower. How long could it take to find a dozen slow
spots in webrick? Maybe 2-3 days? Another 2-3 days to tune them?

If it were that easy somebody would have already done
it. Profiling and optimizing languages like Ruby can be
quite difficult, if you do it at the C level you often get
results very difficult to interpret or even do anything useful
with. I.e. the profiler shows you spending 80% your time in
some basic underlying routine of ruby. If you do it at a higher
level, the overhead of benchmarking can often skew the results
badly.

So it's hard to get the data, and optimizing w/o real profiling
data is one of the great evils of programming. With simpler
apps you can often make a good guess, but in my experience
guessing where the time is spent in a more complex application
is almost always wrong.

_ Booker C. Bense

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Sascha Ebach <se@digitale-wertschoepfung.de> wrote: