From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2002-06-06T07:41:50+09:00
Subject: Re: mod_ruby and module space

Kent Dahl wrote:

> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> 
>>That's the conclusion I came to here, that the first script is in an
>>anonymous namespace and the loaded module seems to be in another
>>namespace altogether...guess it's time to report that. 
>>
> 
> The loaded (or required) module falls into the toplevel namespace, where
> it should be. (Or requiring any library would get very messy indeed.)
> 
> BTW: A nice thing I hadn't seen anywhere in the mod_ruby documentation;
> the lib/apache/ruby-debug.rb variant which outputs exception info to the
> client. (It really should have been default in the installation for
> mod_ruby_nubies like myself. :-)
> 
> 
>>I just switched
>>to having my scripts executed as CGI programs using command-line ruby.
>>mod_ruby has some fundamental things I don't like about it, like not
>>being able to completely clean up the interpreter between uses. 
>>
> 
> Is it really that bad? I mean, the resources that take up space is
> mostly compiled code, such as the required files that still lingers in
> memory (and makes subsequent calls to the script faster, I would assume,
> since the requires would just return at once) and whatever hasn't been
> taken by a GC just yet. I wouldn't think that any other junk would float
> around. But I'm not intimate with the details of mod_ruby...


I'm going to use mod_ruby where I can...but it does freak me out. 
Luckily, I'm going to be hosting Apache in a chroot'd environment from 
now on, so scripts run by multiple clients on the same machine won't 
have to share environments.  I'm sure Apache 2.0 with its threading will 
help make that a non-issue, but under 1.3, virtual hosting with Ruby and 
Apache would be a security nightmare.

What's really sad is, the only thing I could count on to clean up a Ruby 
  script was the complete shutting down of the interpreter between each 
script.  But mod_ruby took that away!  :-(

>>Between
>>that feature and Ruby's garbage collection system, preserving resources
>>seems to be a forgotten relic of ancient programming techniques or
>>something.  I wish there was more focus on making things clean and tight.
>>
> 
> I know what you mean, but as for this case, with webservers and
> server-side scripts, I think that the resource-eating is fairly
> proportional to the speedgains. (Now, as for running Ruby stuff on a
> handheld that isn't one of the new $500 monsters, I totally agree :-))


Possibly...throwing memory at the Ruby GC issue isn't so bad, I guess.

	Sean