How long should "rake routes" run? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I just started out with Rails, so excuse my fairly basic question. I am already noticing that the rake routes command takes a while to execute everytime I run it. I have about 20 routes for 3 controllers and it takes about 40 seconds to execute.
Is that normal? How could I speed this up?
P.S.: I am on Windows 7 with Rails 3.1.3 (set up with Rails Installer).

Answer 1

The rake routes task depends on the environment task which loads your Rails environment and requires thousands of Ruby files.
The startup time of a Rails environment and the corresponding rake routes execution time are very close (on my Linux on-steroids-laptop with a Rails application with ~ 50 routes):
$ time ruby -r./config/environment.rb -e ''
real 0m5.065s
user 0m4.552s
sys 0m0.456s
$ time rake routes
real 0m4.955s
user 0m4.580s
sys 0m0.344s
There is no easy way to decrease startup time as it relies on the way your interpreter requires script files : http://rhnh.net/2011/05/28/speeding-up-rails-startup-time

Answer 2

I came up with a solution to rake routes taking about 8 seconds to run every time. It's a simple file based cache that runs bundle exec rake routes, stores the output in a file under tmp. The filename is the md5 hash of config/routes.rb, so if you make a change and change it back, it will use the old cached file.
I put the following bash functions in an executable file I call fastroutes:
if [ ! -f config/routes.rb ]; then
echo "Not in root of rails app"
exit 1
fi
cached_routes_filename="tmp/cached_routes_$(md5 -q config/routes.rb).txt"
function cache_routes {
bundle exec rake routes > $cached_routes_filename
}
function clear_cache {
for old_file in $(ls tmp/cache_routes*.txt); do
rm $old_file
done
}
function show_cache {
cat $cached_routes_filename
}
function show_current_filename {
echo $cached_routes_filename
}
function main {
if [ ! -f $cached_routes_filename ]; then
cache_routes
fi
show_cache
}
if [[ "$1" == "-f" ]]
then
show_current_filename
elif [[ "$1" == "-r" ]]
then
rm $cached_routes_filename
cache_routes
else
main
fi
Here's a github link too.
This way, you only have to generate the routes once, and then fastroutes will used the cached values.

Answer 3

That seems a bit long, but do you really need to run rake routes that often? On my system, OSX Lion/Rails 3.2.0, rake routes takes ~10s.

Answer 4

In your Rakefile:
#Ouptut stored output of rake routes
task :fast_routes => 'tmp/routes_output' do |t|
sh 'cat', t.source
end
#Update tmp/routes_output if its older than 'config/routes.rb'
file 'tmp/routes_output' => 'config/routes.rb' do |t|
outputf = File.open(t.name, 'w')
begin
$stdout = outputf
Rake.application['routes'].invoke
ensure
outputf.close
$stdout = STDOUT
end
end

Answer 5

Rails environment takes a huge more amount of time to be loaded on Windows. I recommend you to give Unix a try, like Ubuntu, as Windows is the worst environment in which you can run and develop Ruby on Rails applications. But if you are just trying Rails, Windows is enough :)