Autotest CPU Fix
Jan 5th, 2008 by scott
Autotest and rspec both posted updates today. Now, the way to fix this issue is slightly different:
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/vendor/)
autotest.add_exception(/\.svn/)
end
Thanks Ryan and David for the updates!
I've been noticing in my current project that running autotest was constantly consuming about 25-30% of my cpu and causing my macbook pro to run really hot. I did a little googling and found this discussion on the topic.
For me, my problem was definitely the vendor directory (~3500 files in 4 plugins: rspec, rspec_on_rails, restful_open_id_authentication and active_merchant). I tried excluding the entire directory by adding this to my ~/.autotest file:
autotest.exceptions <<%r%^\./(?:coverage|db|doc|log|public|script|vendor|previous_failures.txt)%
end
However, that didn't work. After some investigation, I found out that the rspec_on_rails plugin in my vendor directory was subclassing Autotest::Rspec and setting it's own exceptions string like this:
super
@exceptions = %r%^\./(?:coverage|db|doc|log|public|script|vendor\/rails|previous_failures.txt)%
...
See the problem? It dutifully calls super so AutoTest:initialize can do it's stuff (including calling my hook) and then wipes out the exception string with it's own.
So, I browsed the lib/autotest.rb code and found another hook. Adding this to my ~/.autotest now lowers the cpu usage to about 5%. Huzzah!
autotest.exceptions = Regexp.union(/^\.\/vendor/, autotest.exceptions)
end
Scott Nedderman is the founder of Netphase.com, a consulting practice that specializes in building web applications for Internet startups. He is also a vocalist, plays guitar and penny whistle, occasionally performs in musicals, enjoys camping and is a homeschooling father of 6.
I should have communicated more and synchronized with Dave about the changes I made to @exceptions. sorry. We’ll both release something soon to get them back in sync and happier with each other.
Thanks for posting this. I noticed the same thing but vendor wasn’t my issue. I ran ‘find’ looking for a big chunk of files and found them in .git This is a project where I’m using git-svn. After adding .git to the exception CPU usage is down below 5%.
Thanks! This helped me stop acts_as_solr from making autotest run in a continuous loop when the plugin log files were updated!
This was really helpful, thank you.
I have also noticed absurd CPU usage spikes with autotest. So I was happy to see this post. I upgraded ZenTest to 3.8.0 and put the updated code in my ~/.autotest and now get the following bustage:
loading autotest/rails_rspec
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ZenTest-3.8.0/lib/autotest.rb:515:in `add_exception’: exceptions already compiled (RuntimeError)
Any ideas?
Needed to update rspec too - works like a charm.
Thanks!
If you’re getting the “exceptions already compiled” error, you could try changing the hook to “Autotest.add_hook :initialize”. I didn’t need to do that, but both work.
After editing my ~/.autotest file as described, got this message when starting autotest:
hook run has been deprecated, use initialize
After making the change suggested by Scott (thanks!), the message disappeared.
But it still ran slow, so I added more directories. Responds about 10 times faster now!
Here’s what I did (some are probably already excluded by default):
Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |autotest|
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/vendor/)
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/artwork/)
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/public/)
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/db/)
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/lib/)
autotest.add_exception(/^\.\/tmp/)
autotest.add_exception(/\.svn/)
end