Cool Stack 1.3 is here
It's finally here. Before you download the release, please do read the documentation. It's over a month late, but hopefully the features will compensate for the delay.
Almost every single component in the stack has been upgraded. Two new packages, CSKpython and CSKnginx have been added. And yes - the python package does include mod_python too.
You can read about the full list of changes in the Changelog.
ruby
Significant changes have been made to the ruby package. In addition to the upgrade to ruby1.8.6p114, we include a number of gems, notably mysql, postgres and mongrel. It should also be easy to install any new gem that requires native compilation using gcc - this should just work out of the box. A word of caution if you're running ruby on SPARC. Please DO NOT use gcc. If you're importing native gems, take the extra step of installing Studio 12 and use the rbconfig.studio instead (simply rename it to rbconfig.rb after saving the current one). This file is located in /opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/1.8/sparc-solaris2.10.
There have also been significant performance enhancements for ruby made in this release. By changing compiler flags, we have measured 20-30% improvement. In addition, SPARC-specific patches (which are now in ruby 1.8.7) improve performance a further 8-15%. If you are a ruby user, let us know your experiences. I'd love to hear of any performance changes you see as well.
In a future post, I'll share some performance results on the AMP stack. But for now, please try this release and let us know what you think via the forum or comments on this blog.
Cool Stack installation in Zones
For users who have installed Cool Stack in zones, I know the upgrade is a painful process. As I mentioned earlier, we do hope to fix this situation by allowing upgrade installs in future. But some users have found solutions on their own. In particular, I found this post in the forum interesting. Scroll down to reply 19.
Shanti & Team,
Yet again this latest version of Cool Stack has come at just the right time for our company. We'd been expecting the inclusion of Nginx but the addition of CSKpython is a bonus feature we were not expecting. In particular, the inclusion of mod_python will help greatly with a recent request to support Django on some of our SPARC boxes (will post some feedback to the forums on this at a later date).
We use Ruby (Rails and Mongrel) quite a bit so the performance improvements here are also very welcome. The efforts you have made to aid easier deployment of native gem packages look promising and show that you have listened to feedback from Cool Stack users (me) on this thorny topic.
All in all, I am extremely pleased with the features included in the new release and look forward to seeing Cool Stack grow from strength to strength. It certainly does an excellent job for us!
Posted by James Mernin on June 11, 2008 at 10:04 AM PDT #
Thanks very much for your kind words. Let us know how it works out for you.
Posted by Shanti on June 11, 2008 at 12:26 PM PDT #
Just a quick question, any ideas on when 1.3 final will be out? I don't want to upgrade twice within a week if possible :)
Also, any tips for deploying via JET?
Otherwise, keep up the great work! I especially welcome the ruby speed increases.
Posted by Nick Kaltner on June 15, 2008 at 07:17 PM PDT #
Hi Shanti
I have downloaded Python2.5.2 from the CoolStack 1.3 version, but it's performance is not good as I think. even slow than the same box's Python 2.5.1 which downloaded from sunfreeware.com.
I use the same python script read every word of the target file and sorted them into a big dictionary ,print the top 30 frequency appeared word.
Posted by rmrf on June 16, 2008 at 07:14 PM PDT #