Rails on Windows Is So Slow (Rails -V Takes 4 Seconds)

Rails on Windows is so slow (rails -v takes 4 seconds)

There are a few key points that combined generate the slow performance you're noticing.

• Ruby IO performance (on any version) is up to 3 times slower than Linux counterparts. This is because several unoptimized hops in the Windows codebase of Ruby. This requires further analysis, investigation and optimization not done until today.
• Ruby 1.9.2 produces several stat() calls per file been required, which can increase the slowdown of Ruby itself. This is not present in Ruby 1.8.6 or 1.8.7. This is also solved in Ruby 1.9.3 (trunk) not released yet.
• Projects like Rails requires around 500 files, which combined with above points make Ruby for Windows the snail lot of folks see.

Now, there are workaround to that, some simple and some complex ones.

1. Move back to Ruby 1.8.7 instead of Ruby 1.9.2. That will bring again certain level of speed to your application. Unless you're taking advantage of Unicode support, then 1.8.7 could work for you.
2. Look into tools like Spork to provide scenario/forking for your RSpec/Cucumber
3. Move your development to RAM, using a RAMDisk like ImDisk. Move both Ruby and your application to it and time of loading will be reduced (this is associated with your available RAM too)

Hope some of these options help you.

Rails on Windows: Slow?

I on the other hand find it to be pretty stable, and don't have any kind of speed problems.

I've been using Rails with Windows and Linux (still to use it with Mac OSX), and have had exactly the same sort of response times.

I prefer to use it on Linux though, because of the terminal and all the Linux goodies, but am pretty happy to use it on Windows.

Update:

Thought it would be nice to complete saying I've used Rails both from a Windows Machine, and from a Linux Machine with a virtual windows install, and as previously stated, i had the same sort of response times.

Ruby/Rails running slow on Windows 7

I am using Ruby 1.9.3p392, Rails 3.2.13. The project connects to a mysql database.

• tried it on Window 7 - server takes 10s to startup, rendering a login page takes over 1 minute.
• tried it on ubuntu 12.10 virtual machine on virtualbox - twice as worst
• tried it on ubuntu 12.10 virtual machine on VMWare player - much better, almost on par with Windows 7.

So I bite the bullet and setup a dual boot linux-mint system, and the problems go away. So the problem lies with some low level system api that even a virtual machine is dependent on.

There are other problems with using Windows as well, for example many gems are not compiled for windows (like therubyracer and imagemagic), so you need to jump through the loop to get them to work.

So in conclusion, forget about Windows for RoR development. But seriously, if RoR is made more Windows friendly, I am certain it will be quite a lot more popular. I almost gave up in the process, and it remain a real pain for me having to switch between Windows and Linux every so often.

Rake Test Very Slow in Windows

In general Ruby's MRI interpreter is just not optimized for speed on windows. You might also be running it in development mode on windows vs production mode on the other machines. Rails runs much slower in development mode since it reloads all your classes on every request.

1.8.6 is a very old ruby version. Released almost 3 years ago. You should strongly consider upgrading to 1.9 (or at least 1.8.7). Or switching to JRuby. All of these options will likely lead to a significant performance improvement.

1.8.7 should be fully compatible with 1.8.6. 1.9 has a completely new interpreter that runs 2.5 times faster (Though it has a tendency to occasionally crash on windows). JRuby may be the ideal solution for you since you can run it in either compatibility for 1.8 or 1.9 and it is very stable, but it does not support gems with C extensions and requires a different database adapter.

One last option would be to try running Rails inside of a VMWare with CentOS or another Linux distribution.

Fast Ruby but slow Rails

1.Why "rails" command is very slower than "ruby"?

ruby invokes the Ruby interpreter, which is a compiled executable.

rails invokes the Ruby interpreter plus loads many Ruby libraries that need to be located then parsed by the interpreter, before executing your Rails command. So rails --version will always take longer than ruby --version because it does the same as it plus more.

2.Can we make "rails" command fast as "ruby" command?

Not easily, but this is not usually considered a priority performance issue, because the library loading typically happens once per process - meaning web server requests are not delayed by it, just server start-up time.

Ruby and Rails programs can and do have real performance issues that are normally better to focus on. For instance, they may limit how many concurrent requests that your web server can cope with, and that in turn will affect the costs of running your service. The usual tools for dealing with those practical issues are:

1. Benchmarking - measuring your performance problem in a standard repeatable way, so you can tell how well you are doing when making improvements. Ruby's benchmark standard library is a good place to start with this.

2. Profiling - inspecting which parts of the code are performing badly, so you get some clues on how to fix things. You might look at the gem ruby-prof for this.

It takes some research and practice to learn how to do this effectively, and they are very broad subjects, too much for a Stack Overflow answer. If you want to get started, do a web search for "Ruby Benchmarking" or "Rails Profiling". Best to start when you have a practical problem to solve.

Rake Test Very Slow in Windows

In general Ruby's MRI interpreter is just not optimized for speed on windows. You might also be running it in development mode on windows vs production mode on the other machines. Rails runs much slower in development mode since it reloads all your classes on every request.

1.8.6 is a very old ruby version. Released almost 3 years ago. You should strongly consider upgrading to 1.9 (or at least 1.8.7). Or switching to JRuby. All of these options will likely lead to a significant performance improvement.

1.8.7 should be fully compatible with 1.8.6. 1.9 has a completely new interpreter that runs 2.5 times faster (Though it has a tendency to occasionally crash on windows). JRuby may be the ideal solution for you since you can run it in either compatibility for 1.8 or 1.9 and it is very stable, but it does not support gems with C extensions and requires a different database adapter.

One last option would be to try running Rails inside of a VMWare with CentOS or another Linux distribution.

Rails Windows Vagrant very slow response time

After trying a few things, nothing worked. I couldn't make nfs work on windows.
Then I found about rsync! It solved the performance issue perfectly.
See more about rsync and vagrant here:
http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/synced-folders/rsync.html

On windows, use it with mingw, it works right away:
http://www.mingw.org/

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