Forum: Ruby on Rails Rails on windows

man.. why does everything is so slow on developing on windows?

just get a Mac, you won't regret it (even a Mac mini if you cannot 
afford
more than $600)

How about Linux/Ubuntu?  Is Mac much better than Linux too?

You could start with a VM running Ubuntu to get started with Rails
development. A Mac would be far superior, but Ubuntu will get you 
started.
You can do Rails development on Windows, but you may have trouble with
certain gems.

J

From a purely RoR developer perspective Linux is good. Which you would
expect since most RoR applications are deployed to Linux servers - or
are you deploying to Windows servers. Its just that Macs are nicer :)

As to why your Windows system is slow for developing could be that you
have a crappy system. Windows doesn't help but even Linux will
struggle with an under specd machine. Is your hardware up to snuff?

Given enough hardware I'm sure that a Windows development machine will
fly but there is an issue of getting gems to work. We had a developer
here who started out with Windows and had no end of trouble getting
some gems to work. He finally jacked it in and got a Mac and stopped
swearing so much.

My preferences are:

1) Mac = In heaven
2) Linux = No problem, I can work with this
3) Windows = If this was a job requirement I would not apply :(

Hi,

I am interested in the given profile.

Regards,
Mukesh

lyosha wrote in post #1076588:
> man.. why does everything is so slow on developing on windows?

It's not. Check your machine and rails configuration. Development
environment will always be slower than production or other environment
that caches models.

>Given enough hardware I'm sure that a Windows development machine will
>fly but there is an issue of getting gems to work. We had a developer
>here who started out with Windows and had no end of trouble getting
>some gems to work. He finally jacked it in and got a Mac and stopped
>swearing so much.

In my team we have macs and windows. I develop on windows, and have no
problems whatsoever. It took me a while to get my environment set up
since unfortunately there are fewer windows guides out there, but it is
doable, enjoyable and highly productive.

There are very few gems that are nix specific and won't work on windows.
Passenger and Unicorn come to mind. You can always find alternatives
(thin server). A few things here and there might require additional
configuration but you get the hang of it with time.

Frankly i'm a bit annoyed at Nix/Mac users pretending that development
on the Mac is so much better. It isn't. Developing on windows is just as
easy and productive. If anything, it's better because you can have a
proper custom PC setup, full open source software availability, and a
whole bunch of freedoms possible under windows and not under Mac.

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 12:24 PM, masta Blasta <lists@ruby-forum.com> 
wrote:

> Frankly i'm a bit annoyed at Nix/Mac users pretending that development
> on the Mac is so much better. It isn't. Developing on windows is just as
> easy and productive. If anything, it's better because you can have a
> proper custom PC setup, full open source software availability, and a
> whole bunch of freedoms possible under windows and not under Mac.

Uhhhh. Just out of curiousity, what is a "proper custom PC setup"?
What limitations on "full open source software availability" does a Mac
come with?

And what "whole bunch of freedoms" am I currently missing out on? :-)

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

Hassan Schroeder wrote in post #1077015:

>
> Uhhhh. Just out of curiousity, what is a "proper custom PC setup"?
> What limitations on "full open source software availability" does a Mac
> come with?
>
> And what "whole bunch of freedoms" am I currently missing out on? :-)
>
> --

I'm not going to get into a Mac vs. PC fight here.

Point is, if you like PC+Windows, you can easily carry out RoR 
development, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant.

If you like Mac, more power to you.

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 12:42 PM, masta Blasta <lists@ruby-forum.com> 
wrote:

> I'm not going to get into a Mac vs. PC fight here.

I wasn't trying to start a "fight", I just wanted clarification of your
vague but sweeping statements. To help anyone trying to make
their own decision  :-)

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

On Friday, September 21, 2012 8:25:39 PM UTC+1, Ruby-Forum.com User 
wrote:
>
> lyosha wrote in post #1076588:
> > man.. why does everything is so slow on developing on windows?
>
> It's not. Check your machine and rails configuration. Development
> environment will always be slower than production or other environment
> that caches models.
>
> There some history here - ruby 1.8 was significantly slower on windows
than on unix like platforms, and ruby 1.9.2 also had windows specific
performance regressions (see
http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the-great-rub... 
for
example).. Patch 125 of Ruby 1.9.3 had some windows  specific 
performance
fixes (IO related I think) that supposedly fixed a lot of that (I'm not 
a
windows user) so it's definitely worth upgrading to that if you're 
running
an older version.



>
>

Again, I think there is a lot of history here. It used to be that to 
build
any gem with native extensions on windows (when using the 1 click ruby
installer) you needed  a paid for version of Visual studio (It even had 
to
be a specific version I think). A tremendous amount of work (by Luis 
Lavena
among others) has gone into improving this, but many of us remember the 
not
so distant old days where you had to just hope that someone had build a
binary package of the gem.  Part of it is being slightly off the beaten
path - eg capybara-webkit or poltegeist don't support windows (or at 
least
not officially) and it's not because of a fundamental reason they 
couldn't
but because the core developers of those gems don't use windows - 
windows
support probably won't happen unless someone else helps them out.

jruby is a good option too.

Not sure what these freedoms are though (especially compare to Linux)

Fred