JRuby startup very slow on Win7

fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 5:16pm

Is it normal that printing “1” requires more than five second? Sorry my
english.

I am new to ruby, currently I use PHP and Perl in Windows, but I don’t
like PHP and Perl is not 100% compatible to Windows (nor Ruby, as I
see). I have found JRuby which claimed itself fully cross-platform. I
tried it, but it starts very-very slow. I have AMD 64 3000+, 1 Gb DDR,
Windows7, Java 6u17.

I have created a simple test (as I seen here:
JRuby startup very slow - JRuby - Ruby-Forum): I runned the programs ten times
and get the average run time. Here are the results (in seconds):

0.1 perl -e “print 1”
0.1 ruby-1.9 -e “puts 1”
0.2 php -r “print(1);”
0.5 ruby-1.8 -e “puts 1”
1.9 jruby-1.2.0 -e “puts 1”
2.1 jruby-1.3.1 -e “puts 1”
5.6 jruby-1.4 -e “puts 1”
5.3 jruby-1.4 --1.9 -e “puts 1”

Content of t:\benchmark.rb

require ‘benchmark’

def fib_ruby(n)
if n < 2
n
else
fib_ruby(n - 2) + fib_ruby(n - 1)
end
end

TIMES = (ARGV[0] || 5).to_i
N = (ARGV[1] || 30).to_i
TIMES.times {
puts Benchmark.measure { fib_ruby(N) }
}

c:\Programs\ruby\bin\ruby.exe t:\benchmark.rb

4.172000 0.000000 4.172000 ( 4.934000)
4.265000 0.000000 4.265000 ( 5.245000)
4.203000 0.000000 4.203000 ( 5.141000)
4.250000 0.000000 4.250000 ( 4.943000)
4.141000 0.000000 4.141000 ( 4.924000)

t:\ruby-1.9\bin\ruby.exe t:\benchmark.rb

2.328000 0.000000 2.328000 ( 2.992187)
2.391000 0.000000 2.391000 ( 2.759766)
2.328000 0.000000 2.328000 ( 2.704102)
2.375000 0.000000 2.375000 ( 2.836914)
2.406000 0.000000 2.406000 ( 2.768555)

t:\jruby-1.2.0\bin\jruby.bat t:\benchmark.rb

1.340000 0.000000 1.340000 ( 1.259000)
1.176000 0.000000 1.176000 ( 1.178000)
1.167000 0.000000 1.167000 ( 1.167000)
1.193000 0.000000 1.193000 ( 1.193000)
1.177000 0.000000 1.177000 ( 1.176000)

t:\jruby-1.3.1\bin\jruby.bat t:\benchmark.rb

1.409000 0.000000 1.409000 ( 1.305000)
1.218000 0.000000 1.218000 ( 1.217000)
1.210000 0.000000 1.210000 ( 1.209000)
1.181000 0.000000 1.181000 ( 1.181000)
1.191000 0.000000 1.191000 ( 1.191000)

c:\Programs\jruby-1.4\bin\jruby.exe t:\benchmark.rb

1.303000 0.000000 1.303000 ( 1.302000)
1.289000 0.000000 1.289000 ( 1.290000)
1.280000 0.000000 1.280000 ( 1.281000)
1.296000 0.000000 1.296000 ( 1.296000)
1.263000 0.000000 1.263000 ( 1.263000)

c:\Programs\jruby-1.4\bin\jruby.exe --1.9 t:\benchmark.rb

3.260000 0.000000 3.260000 ( 3.261000)
3.224000 0.000000 3.224000 ( 3.224000)
3.212000 0.000000 3.212000 ( 3.212000)
3.155000 0.000000 3.155000 ( 3.153000)
3.231000 0.000000 3.231000 ( 3.232000)

fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 5:51pm

The Java virtual machine can take a while to start up, as it’s doing
quite a
lot (like booting a small virtual computer every time you start it).
This
is no problem for long running programs like a web server, but you will
certainly notice it when you run a short script like “puts 1” from the
command line. All JVM based languages have this startup time issue.
This
is the trade off for running inside the portable JVM environment.

I think the problem would be less severe if you had more memory
available.
I notice much worse Java startup times at only 1Gb in Windows. At 2Gb
it
still is not instantaneous, but it seldom needs to reallocate and swap
in
order to get the JVM running. Understand that even on a server machine
with
many GB of memory and powerful CPU, “jruby -e ‘puts 1’” still takes a
second
or so, while “ruby -e ‘puts 1’” takes only a few ms.

Rob

fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 5:56pm

Hi Máté,

Your results are very atypical. I also run JRuby every day on Windows
7, and JRuby’s startup is around 0.5 sec for me, which is not that bad
for JVM-based language.

Please double check that you don’t have %RUBYOPT% set, and you don’t
load rubygems by default.

Your fib benchmark shows pretty good numbers for JRuby, compared to MRI.

Thanks,
–Vladimir

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Máté Farkas [email protected] wrote:

Is it normal that printing “1” requires more than five second? Sorry my
english.

I am new to ruby, currently I use PHP and Perl in Windows, but I don’t
like PHP and Perl is not 100% compatible to Windows (nor Ruby, as I
see). I have found JRuby which claimed itself fully cross-platform. I
tried it, but it starts very-very slow. I have AMD 64 3000+, 1 Gb DDR,
Windows7, Java 6u17.

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fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 7:06pm

That’s a huge win. Awesome tip.

On Nov 6, 2009, at 11:56 AM, Vladimir S. [email protected]
wrote:

rote:

Windows7, Java 6u17.

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fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 7:34pm

Cheers for that, Vladimir.

Mate, did you set that RUBYOPT explicitly or was it set by default by
Windows installer?
IMHO, if it causes unexpected delays, should we have it off by
default? Or, have some more direct way to turn it off? For example,
–fast option or a new startup script ‘jruby-lite’ which would
optimise for one liners and simple scripts.

I guess the other idea for better startup performance: NailGun
(http://kenai.com/projects/jruby/pages/JRubyWithNailgun)
Have only checked with 1.3, but most probably works with 1.4 too:
$jruby --ng-server
Then
$jruby --ng
should be lightning fast.

Also, -that default- JRUBY_HOME setting- caused me some grief on
Windows, when running on Eclipse OSGI (an extra ~15sec delay, fixed by
explicitly setting it).

Good luck,
Gergo

2009/11/6 Rob H. [email protected]:

Thanks,

tried it, but it starts very-very slow. I have AMD 64 3000+, 1 Gb DDR,
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fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 6:52pm

Vladimir S. wrote:

Please double check that you don’t have %RUBYOPT% set, and you don’t
load rubygems by default.
Dear Vladimir!

Thanks, I deleted this value and it’s startup is 1.8 sec now.
I didn’t checked anything, just installed it and I did would like to try
(and learn) Ruby, but I became terrified. (Sorry my english)

Thank you for your help again!

fmate14 · November 6, 2009, 8:11pm

G N wrote:

Mate, did you set that RUBYOPT explicitly or was it set by default by
Windows installer?
I setted nothing, I am newbie.

I guess the other idea for better startup performance: NailGun
Have only checked with 1.3, but most probably works with 1.4 too:
With NailGun JRuby crashes if I started it from console (“cmd”) or from
a batch script. (SocketException: Connection reset) It starts up in 1.0
second if I run it from a Perl script.