6 ms·

Traveling Ruby 20150210: smaller, supports Ruby 2.2, Windows

lucaspiller 12y ago
I'm in the process of moving a load of ancient (Rails 1 & 2) apps to new servers. It's a nightmare because these are running on Ruby 1.8.4 and Ruby 1.8.6 which doesn't even run properly on the latest versions of Linux and OS X. There's also dependency issues, the mysql gem won't compile against recent versions of MySQL, and the same with rmagick... That combined with the not-so-strict development practices of 8 years ago has given me many headaches over the last month. Imaging the machines is an option, but we'd rather avoid having to deal with another shellshock situation so decided to put them on new VMs. This looks very interesting... What's the support like with Rails apps? If we'd had something like this it would have been a breeze (assuming it is 100% self contained like Go applications).
- amalag 12y ago
  I had the best success with Jruby for Rails 2 apps. Makes moving between windows and linux pretty easy.
jgmmo 12y ago
Sounds great. Looking forward to trying it out. The rb_to_exe never worked that great for me. I also tried Ocra, which works ok -- but the packages end up enormous.
randiantech 12y ago
looks cool, but why not use docker instead?
- eropple 12y ago
  Why would Docker be appropriate? It's not a substitute for running code on-host, and without boot2docker Windows and OS X don't support it anyway.
tkho 12y ago
I work in a mainly Python + JVM environment, and this has been very useful in deploying a Rails-based distributed build system (https://github.com/square/kochiku https://github.com/square/kochiku) in our environment. It’s super easy to build essentially static multi-platform tarballs—on my Mac—that just work in our Linux production environment.
ryanmarsh 12y ago
Ruby on Windows is hell and it isn't Ruby's fault. I finally ditched a project I had written with Ruby on Windows and opted for Node which has fewer problems compiling native modules. Ruby out of the box runs fine, trying to get thin or Nokogiri to build was worse than trying to get X.org configured to work with vendor video drivers on linux in the 90's
- FooBarWidget 12y ago
  How did Node.js solve compilation problems on Windows? Doesn't Node.js suffer from the same problems? Do they provide a devkit that includes a compiler or something?
  - ryanmarsh 12y ago
    i don't know how Node does it better but I have compiled several native extensions on windows just fine. I think the difference is people about Windows in the node community.
- adrianlmm 12y ago
  I feel your pain, I have the same problem, Ruby installs fine, but building dependencies is a gamble, I cannot install thin on Ruby 2.2 on Windows, so I'm stuck to Ruby 1.9.3, there are bug reports, but nobody cares, I don't thing this project will change that.
- giblaz 12y ago
  Oof, why not try something like setting up a Vagrant machine running Linux instead of rewriting the entire project? Seems a lot simpler and way better for the project.
  - ryanmarsh 12y ago
    It's for a Microsoft shop. Their IT wouldn't let me have a Linux VM because they didn't want to be on the hook for supporting it. This is typical stuff for Fortune 500 IT consulting. I swear IT depts are making themselves irrelevant.

I'm in the process of moving a load of ancient (Rails 1 & 2) apps to new servers. It's a nightmare because these are running on Ruby 1.8.4 and Ruby 1.8.6 which doesn't even run properly on the latest versions of Linux and OS X. There's also dependency issues, the mysql gem won't compile against recent versions of MySQL, and the same with rmagick... That combined with the not-so-strict development practices of 8 years ago has given me many headaches over the last month. Imaging the machines is an option, but we'd rather avoid having to deal with another shellshock situation so decided to put them on new VMs. This looks very interesting... What's the support like with Rails apps? If we'd had something like this it would have been a breeze (assuming it is 100% self contained like Go applications).

amalag 12y ago
I had the best success with Jruby for Rails 2 apps. Makes moving between windows and linux pretty easy.

jgmmo 12y ago

Sounds great. Looking forward to trying it out. The rb_to_exe never worked that great for me. I also tried Ocra, which works ok -- but the packages end up enormous.

randiantech 12y ago

looks cool, but why not use docker instead?

eropple 12y ago
Why would Docker be appropriate? It's not a substitute for running code on-host, and without boot2docker Windows and OS X don't support it anyway.

tkho 12y ago

I work in a mainly Python + JVM environment, and this has been very useful in deploying a Rails-based distributed build system (https://github.com/square/kochiku https://github.com/square/kochiku) in our environment. It’s super easy to build essentially static multi-platform tarballs—on my Mac—that just work in our Linux production environment.

ryanmarsh 12y ago

Ruby on Windows is hell and it isn't Ruby's fault. I finally ditched a project I had written with Ruby on Windows and opted for Node which has fewer problems compiling native modules. Ruby out of the box runs fine, trying to get thin or Nokogiri to build was worse than trying to get X.org configured to work with vendor video drivers on linux in the 90's

FooBarWidget 12y ago
How did Node.js solve compilation problems on Windows? Doesn't Node.js suffer from the same problems? Do they provide a devkit that includes a compiler or something?
- ryanmarsh 12y ago
  i don't know how Node does it better but I have compiled several native extensions on windows just fine. I think the difference is people about Windows in the node community.
adrianlmm 12y ago
I feel your pain, I have the same problem, Ruby installs fine, but building dependencies is a gamble, I cannot install thin on Ruby 2.2 on Windows, so I'm stuck to Ruby 1.9.3, there are bug reports, but nobody cares, I don't thing this project will change that.
giblaz 12y ago
Oof, why not try something like setting up a Vagrant machine running Linux instead of rewriting the entire project? Seems a lot simpler and way better for the project.
- ryanmarsh 12y ago
  It's for a Microsoft shop. Their IT wouldn't let me have a Linux VM because they didn't want to be on the hook for supporting it. This is typical stuff for Fortune 500 IT consulting. I swear IT depts are making themselves irrelevant.