DeadViewCatcher¶ ↑

DeadViewCatcher is a gem for Ruby on Rails giving you an easy way to find which views you are not using anymore in your app. This might be really useful for big Rails app maintained by a large team.

Works with Rails 2.3 (Will be tested against Rails3 soon)

Usage¶ ↑

Simply load the gem in your rails app.

Then instantiate DeadViewCatcher during the boot:

DeadViewCatcher.watch!

Now, at any time, you can send a TRAP signal to your rails instance in order to generate a dump of your views status:

kill -s TRAP pid_of_your_instance

If you want to generate a consolidated dump gathering data from all your Rails instances, just choose one instance and send it the URG signal:

kill -s URG pid_of_one_of_your_instances

Options¶ ↑

The watch! method accepts some options :

# The correct grep string in order to select instances of your app for consolidated dumps
# This option is mandatory if you plan to use the consolidated dump feature
DeadViewCatcher.watch!(:grep => 'unicorn_rails worker')

# Change the default signal
DeadViewCatcher.watch!(:signal => 'USR1')

# Change the consolidated default signal
DeadViewCatcher.watch!(:all_instances_signal => 'USR2')

# Change the default file for the dump
DeadViewCatcher.watch!(:file => '/tmp/somewhere.txt')

When customizing the signal you want to catch, be careful when picking one, as your server might already catch some (like Unicorn does for USR1 and USR2).