Don't keep the user waiting while your favorite Javascript library are streamed down the wire. Keep the download small and your users will thank you for it! All you need is a simple snippet inside your lighttpd.conf file:

# this assumes that mod_compress is loaded
compress.cache-dir = "/var/lighttpd/cache/compress/"
compress.filetype  = ("text/plain", 
                      "text/html", 
                      "text/javascript", 
                      "text/css", 
                      "application/xml")

That's all folks! Without fussing with risky source altering Javascript compressors. Just let lighttpd gzip the content before transmitting over to the browser. Some results for the Javascript files shipped with rails:

Technorati tags: Rails, lighttpd