5 ms·

Is your time so lacking in value that you'll expend a substantial amount of time rolling and maintaining a custom distro of Linux that'll save maybe 50-150 mega

Is your time so lacking in value that you'll expend a substantial amount of time rolling and maintaining a custom distro of Linux that'll save maybe 50-150 megabytes of RAM? Are you in the web hosting business or something?

tptacek 16y ago
I have a Rails app I want to distribute as a VM to each member of my team. What's the best option that's just 50 megs bigger than Tiny Core?
- alnayyir 16y ago
  I was speaking in RAM, not the disk-space of a VM. I didn't know the context of what you were looking for. Is there some reason you can't accomplish this using RVM and a dev database? Any specific software that makes you think it isn't practical to do so? Virtualization seems a little heavy duty given the options for sandboxing python and ruby apps these days. Edit: You really really don't want to cope with the raw horror and pain of a minimalist kernel that doesn't provide any of the things you usually take for granted.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Everyone on our team carries a Macbook; I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it. I wasn't reading you carefully enough before; I don't care at all about RAM size. I care how big the distro is to download.
    - alnayyir 16y ago
      >Everyone on our team carries a Macbook I work on a macbook too. > I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it. Is that a political issue or have there been questionable hiring decisions by someone? When I'm talking about gift-wrapping it with RVM, literally all they'll have to run is a well-made shell script to fire it up. http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-terminal-shell-scripts-double-click.html http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-termina... Should do the trick, although you'll want to test it in Finder yourself. I can't come up with anything easier than double-clicking on a shell script.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        This ignores Ruby Dependency Hell, which is why I'd want to use VMs in the first place.
        alnayyir 16y ago
        RVM exists specifically to solve ruby dependency hell. Have you ever made a sandboxed app with it before?
      - th0ma5 16y ago
        this is really the right answer, as it is the exact solution given what tools are available for solving the problem of managing development. but what is the difference between the startup time in this video, and the start up time of an ide? i can see a developer workflow where you start up the vm, create your example function or class of what you are solving, close the vm, and let some script find the new file, check everything in, etc... i don't feel it would be much different than having a standard install of an ide for a group of devs, but in this instance you could have all the customization of an entire OS, plus creating a single app that people can throw away and start from square one, or even check in the whole OS install as a version? i agree this is a lot of overhead, but i think it is okay someone is exploring this, i feel it is very interesting, and a pattern of abstraction we should consider more. this is how i see the small EC2 images i've been playing with.
        alnayyir 16y ago
        >video What are you talking about? > i think it is okay someone is exploring this Not on the job, do it at home. > i feel it is very interesting What is? I'm having a really hard time understanding you. >a pattern of abstraction What pattern, what abstraction? An abstraction is a distinct singular entity, a pattern is multiple related datum with a a correlation in form or substance.
        th0ma5 16y ago
        1. video - there is a video in the original post 2. job - i have to explore on the job all the time, i don't have the stuff at home 3. creating a vm for making dev environments, what i was thinking this part of the thread is about 4. abstracting away the entire os setup and seeing that combination of os+app as just an app, i would consider that an abstraction, and not just a pattern, but the pattern being trying to think along these things of what can be abstracted in this way. not trying to combine or confuse the terms.
    - ned 16y ago
      Joyent came out with such a product in 2007, called Slingshot. I remember it being quite slow (…for what was supposed to be a desktop app), but functional. http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/ http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/
    - semanticist 16y ago
      You could look into how Instiki (http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage) packages itself? It provides a Mac OS X app that includes all of its dependencies in the app - including Rails. If you're patient, eventually MacRuby will support Rails and can generate compiled .app bundles. But if you need it NOW, I'd look into how Instiki works.
- davidw 16y ago
  Sounds like you're distributing a web app like a desktop app. Maybe it would have been better off as a desktop app in the first place?
epochwolf 16y ago
> save maybe 50-150 megabytes I think my typical server setup idles at 30~40mb of ram before I add services. At the moment with nginx (with passenger, no active rails processes), cloudkick-agent, a fat irssi and some php-fastcgi workers I'm only using 122mb of ram. I don't know how much ram you really have to shave off.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  More or less my point. the ~150 additional megabytes was if they were deploying with Ubuntu + some kind of java server management software (worst case scenario for a base deployment template?)

tptacek 16y ago

I have a Rails app I want to distribute as a VM to each member of my team. What's the best option that's just 50 megs bigger than Tiny Core?

alnayyir 16y ago
I was speaking in RAM, not the disk-space of a VM. I didn't know the context of what you were looking for. Is there some reason you can't accomplish this using RVM and a dev database? Any specific software that makes you think it isn't practical to do so? Virtualization seems a little heavy duty given the options for sandboxing python and ruby apps these days. Edit: You really really don't want to cope with the raw horror and pain of a minimalist kernel that doesn't provide any of the things you usually take for granted.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Everyone on our team carries a Macbook; I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it. I wasn't reading you carefully enough before; I don't care at all about RAM size. I care how big the distro is to download.
  - alnayyir 16y ago
    >Everyone on our team carries a Macbook I work on a macbook too. > I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it. Is that a political issue or have there been questionable hiring decisions by someone? When I'm talking about gift-wrapping it with RVM, literally all they'll have to run is a well-made shell script to fire it up. http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-terminal-shell-scripts-double-click.html http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-termina... Should do the trick, although you'll want to test it in Finder yourself. I can't come up with anything easier than double-clicking on a shell script.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      This ignores Ruby Dependency Hell, which is why I'd want to use VMs in the first place.
      - alnayyir 16y ago
        RVM exists specifically to solve ruby dependency hell. Have you ever made a sandboxed app with it before?
    - th0ma5 16y ago
      this is really the right answer, as it is the exact solution given what tools are available for solving the problem of managing development. but what is the difference between the startup time in this video, and the start up time of an ide? i can see a developer workflow where you start up the vm, create your example function or class of what you are solving, close the vm, and let some script find the new file, check everything in, etc... i don't feel it would be much different than having a standard install of an ide for a group of devs, but in this instance you could have all the customization of an entire OS, plus creating a single app that people can throw away and start from square one, or even check in the whole OS install as a version? i agree this is a lot of overhead, but i think it is okay someone is exploring this, i feel it is very interesting, and a pattern of abstraction we should consider more. this is how i see the small EC2 images i've been playing with.
      - alnayyir 16y ago
        >video What are you talking about? > i think it is okay someone is exploring this Not on the job, do it at home. > i feel it is very interesting What is? I'm having a really hard time understanding you. >a pattern of abstraction What pattern, what abstraction? An abstraction is a distinct singular entity, a pattern is multiple related datum with a a correlation in form or substance.
        th0ma5 16y ago
        1. video - there is a video in the original post 2. job - i have to explore on the job all the time, i don't have the stuff at home 3. creating a vm for making dev environments, what i was thinking this part of the thread is about 4. abstracting away the entire os setup and seeing that combination of os+app as just an app, i would consider that an abstraction, and not just a pattern, but the pattern being trying to think along these things of what can be abstracted in this way. not trying to combine or confuse the terms.
  - ned 16y ago
    Joyent came out with such a product in 2007, called Slingshot. I remember it being quite slow (…for what was supposed to be a desktop app), but functional. http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/ http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/
  - semanticist 16y ago
    You could look into how Instiki (http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage) packages itself? It provides a Mac OS X app that includes all of its dependencies in the app - including Rails. If you're patient, eventually MacRuby will support Rails and can generate compiled .app bundles. But if you need it NOW, I'd look into how Instiki works.
davidw 16y ago
Sounds like you're distributing a web app like a desktop app. Maybe it would have been better off as a desktop app in the first place?

epochwolf 16y ago

> save maybe 50-150 megabytes I think my typical server setup idles at 30~40mb of ram before I add services. At the moment with nginx (with passenger, no active rails processes), cloudkick-agent, a fat irssi and some php-fastcgi workers I'm only using 122mb of ram. I don't know how much ram you really have to shave off.

alnayyir 16y ago
More or less my point. the ~150 additional megabytes was if they were deploying with Ubuntu + some kind of java server management software (worst case scenario for a base deployment template?)