rails-dev-boost in Rails 3.2.8

[nozpheratu]

I recently upgraded to rails 3.2.8 which seems to use the thin server by default, from my understanding rails-dev-boost only speeds up WEBrick as opposed to the thin server.

Is there any way I can switch back over to WEBrick to get the speed boost offered by this gem?

[thedarkone]

rails-dev-boost should be completely server agnostic. The best way to determine if rails-dev-boost is running correctly is to enable the debug mode. This is easiest done by adding a RailsDevelopmentBoost.debug! into a Rails initializer file (these are to be found in config/initializers folder). After restarting the server you should check out your log/development.log file to see if there are [DEV-BOOST] debug messages in there. Try changing a file and then reload a web page to see that rails-dev-boost is indeed unloading relevant constants and files.

[thedarkone]

@12eebok any news?

[nozpheratu]

@thedarkone Sorry I didn't get your first comment notification.

I can confirm that dev boost is indeed running. Perhaps Thin web server is simply slower than WEBrick in general hence the performance drop. I recall when I was running Thin server on Rails 3.1.3 along with rails-dev-boost in development mode I didn't notice any performance gain, but switching over to the default WEBrick yielded a dramatic speed boost in comparison.

The performance difference is fairly negligible on 3.2.8 with Thin server compared to WEBrick on 3.1.3, but only once the website is fully up and running and my browser has everything cached, however. For instance if I was to completely clear my cache in FireFox it can take up to a minute for a page to load and I don't remember having this issue with WEBrick.

[thedarkone]

What you are describing (browser cache etc.) probably has to do with the speed of the assets compilation on 3.1 vs 3.2 or something, I don't think rails-dev-boost can be of any help here...

The correctly running rails-dev-boost in debug mode should look like something like this:

• [DEV-BOOST] [LOAD] and [DEV-BOOST] [ADD_CONSTANTS] messages as the application is booting or server is processing the first request for the given controller/page,
• [DEV-BOOST] [CHANGED] and gradually indented [DEV-BOOST] [REMOVING] messages if an .rb has been changed and related constants are being unloaded, followed by [DEV-BOOST] [LOAD] and [DEV-BOOST] [ADD_CONSTANTS] on the next request,
• no [DEV-BOOST] messages if no .rb files have been changed (except maybe an occasional [DEV-BOOST] --- START --- and [DEV-BOOST] --- END --- if rails-dev-boost is not running in an async mode).

[thedarkone]

I'm closing this.