From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2006-01-11T09:35:24+09:00
Subject: Re: rails: webrick & lighttp/fcgi threading model

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 4:01 pm, Christer Nilsson wrote:

> Webrick is a development server, so it is starting a new ruby process
> for every page.

Webrick is much maligned because of the way that Rails operates with it, but 
the above is not true, in general.

Webrick is a pure ruby web server.  It is used for development with Rails 
because it's convenient to start, but very slow, _with Rails_, because of the 
way Rails uses it.  That slowness is nothing inherent in Webrick itself.

Used without Rails, webrick is surprisingly fast, given that it is pure Ruby, 
and it is also quite stable and dependable.  I use it for development 
purposes quite often, and even on a fast connection, for light usage, one 
really can't discern a different in speed between an app or dynamic site 
running off of Webrick versus one running through Apache or lighttpd.  It is 
a great tool.


Kirk Haines