comp.lang.ruby

On Feb 15, 2008, at 11:42 PM, Michael Granger wrote:

> Does the common complaint about mod_ruby really boil down to Ruby's
> lack of re-entrancy? Or maybe this is just a re-phrasing of the
> "shared hosting problem"? I mentioned in the previous post that
> mod_ruby is probably not suitable for running untrusted code or in
> shared environments without additional partitioning, but I still
> don't think that describes the majority of situations, and it
> certainly doesn't warrant dismissal of the whole package outright.

I don't think that the issue is of mod_ruby, but rather of people's
expectations of mod_ruby. I think they expect it to behave as mod_perl
and mod_php do. But Ruby is a very different language with very
different issues. So, as you say, "with great power..."

One reference you might find useful in understanding the perception
shared among many Ruby developers is this:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/mod_ruby

Before you say, Ruby is not Rails (or vice versa), I would add quickly
that people who are experiencing mod_ruby problems are very often
Rails developers, and almost all documentation on deployment
encourages a multi-process rather than multi-thread deployment model.
Can't say I blame them.

My guess is that if you are a good programmer, versed in the subtle
bugs that can creep into re-entrant programs or if you are running
exactly one Web application per Apache, then you'll be ok. I don't
know because although I would dearly love to, I have not successfully
deployed anything on mod_ruby, and given the fact that merb, thin,
Rails, and most other Ruby Web frameworks deploy most successfully on
top of mongrel or Rack, it's not likely I'll swim upstream on this
one. I'm just clarifying why the *perception* seems to be out there.