As of 24 May 2010

Because New Relic RPM is used by more than 4,000 organizations to manage their Ruby on Rails and Java applications in production, we have unique insight into how thousands of applications are deployed.

Since April, 2009, we have periodically published a summary of the most commonly used versions of Ruby, Rails and the various plugins and gems deployed for Ruby applications. This report enables you to compare your own deployed application stack with those used by other development teams. Are you behind the curve in Ruby? Are there some plugins or gems that your team may want to consider? Have you developed a gem and wonder how many apps use it in production? This is a good place to start that conversation.

Later this year we will publish benchmarks of the Java stacks our customers use.

Many of our customers have opted in to have their performance data shared with the Rails Core Team to aid in the team’s ongoing work on the platform. In addition to that data New Relic also aggregates information on the versions of OS, Ruby, and Rails used and the various plugins deployed.

In this report we list only the most commonly used Ruby and Rails versions and only the most commonly used plugins and gems because a complete list is too long to post here and is probably not all that useful.

The research is done by identifying the versions of deployed application stack components on more than 5,000 hosts monitored by New Relic. This report does not measure market share of any software. It is intended to provide Ruby on Rails developers with a means to compare their own deployment choices against the larger population of deployed production RoR apps.

Most Commonly Deployed Ruby Versions
(% of RPM Users)

Ruby 1.8.6 remains the most commonly used version, declining a bit from our last report in January. Version 1.8.7 continues to increase in popularity.

Most Commonly Deployed Rails Versions
(% of RPM Users)

With a surge, Rails 2.3.5 has become the most commonly used version growing from only 13% of deployments in January to 48% today. As expected all other versions have declined in use. It’s interesting to see that Rails 3.0 Betas 1, 2, and 3 are used on nearly 2% of hosts. Watch this number grow dramatically in the months ahead.

Most Commonly Used Gems
(% of RPM Users)

This is the list of the top 50 gems deployed. If a gem you are interested in is not listed, tweet @newrelic with the gem name and we can tweet the percent of use across our customer base. How to read our Gems chart: The number following the name of each gem represents the percent of hosts having this gem deployed.

Most Commonly Used Plugins
(% of RPM Users)

This is the list of the top 50 plugins deployed. If a plugin you are interested in is not listed, tweet @newrelic with the plugin name and we can tweet the percent of use across our customer base. How to read our plugin chart: The number following the name of each plugin represents the percent of hosts having this plugin deployed.

Comments?

We would like to get your feedback on this report. Is it useful? What do you find interesting in the data? Use the Feedback button below. Thanks.

As of 01 October 2010

Welcome to the latest Ruby on Rails State of the Stack report. Because New Relic RPM is used by more than 5,500 organizations to manage their Ruby on Rails and Java applications in production, we have unique insight into how thousands of applications are deployed.

Since April, 2009, we have periodically published a summary of the most commonly used versions of Ruby, Rails and the various plugins and gems deployed for Ruby applications. This report enables you to compare your own deployed application stack with those used by other development teams. Are you behind the curve in Ruby? Are there some plugins or gems that your team may want to consider? Have you developed a gem and wonder how many apps use it in production? This is a good place to start that conversation.

Many of our customers have opted in to have their performance data shared with the Rails Core Team to aid in the team’s ongoing work on the platform. In addition to that data New Relic also aggregates information on the versions of OS, Ruby, and Rails used and the various plugins deployed. In this report we list only the most commonly used Ruby and Rails versions and only the most commonly used plugins and gems because a complete list is too long to post here and is probably not all that useful.

The research is done by identifying the versions of deployed application stack components on tens of thousands of application instances monitored by New Relic. This report does not measure market share of any software. It is intended to provide Ruby on Rails developers with a means to compare their own deployment choices against the larger population of deployed production RoR apps.

Most Commonly Deployed Ruby Versions
(% of Ruby Applications)

Ruby 1.8.6 continues to drop in popularity, down just over 17% in the last few months but is still in place in just over a third of the applications we monitor. It appears most users are upgrading to 1.8.7, as the growth of the Ruby 1.9 is still nascent.

Most Commonly Deployed JRuby Versions
(% of JRuby Applications)

More and more applications are using JRuby since our last state of the stack. Over 50% of the JRuby apps monitored by New Relic are running on 1.5.X..

Most Commonly Deployed Ruby Web Server
(% of Ruby Applications)

The race is on! Thin and Passenger are almost neck and neck at ~40% each. Surprisingly Mongrel has dwindled to 10% while Unicorn represents less than 3%.

Most Commonly Deployed Rails Versions
(% of Rails Applications)

Rails 2.3.5 is holding strong representing a third of the Rails apps. While still quite new, Rails 3 comes in with a respectable 7.8%, up from 2% of apps using the beta as of our last state of the stack.

Most Commonly Used Gems
(% of Rails Applications)

This is the list of the top 50 gems deployed. If a gem you are interested in is not listed, tweet @newrelic with the gem name and we can tweet the percent of use across our customer base. How to read our Gems chart: The number following the name of each gem represents the percent of hosts having this gem deployed.

Most Commonly Used Plugins
(% of Rails Applications)

This is the list of the top 50 plugins deployed. If a plugin you are interested in is not listed, tweet @newrelic with the plugin name and we can tweet the percent of use across our customer base. How to read our plugin chart: The number following the name of each plugin represents the percent of hosts having this plugin deployed.

Comments?

We would like to get your feedback on this report. Is it useful? What do you find interesting in the data? Use the Feedback button below. Thanks.