I can’t understand why people who are serious about production
environment stability would install multiple applications in the same
environment. It’s not healthy.
One very nice way to do this is to run each app with its own user, then
have a ~/.gems directory. Then you can only install each app’s gems
here.
For example:
For my_app_1:
The app code is here: /home/my_app_1/rails/current
And the gems are here: /home/my_app_1/.gems
For my_app_2:
The app code is here: /home/my_app_2/rails/current
And the gems are here: /home/my_app_2/.gems
Both users have ~/.gems in their gem load path. So user my_app_1 doesn’t
see user my_app_2’s gems, and vice versa.
This is how some shared hosts let users install their own gems without
breaking anyone else’s apps.
Not sure if this is a python troll or not… however, our biggest
problem was the development environment, not production.
I hosed my development environment once. I did pair programming with
a VIM junkie, and foolishly let him install whatever he wanted on my
laptop to embed MacVIM and make it telepathic, or something. When he
was done I couldn’t find my usual shell vi again. (Yes, sometimes I
use vi instead of Textmate to edit config files and such. But I don’t
want it in a window with its own kitchen sink.)
Then the next day I installed Ruby 1.9 from MacPorts and, in the
process of making it the default, managed to delete the Ruby that came
with OS X. Gems blew up everywhere, yadda yadda, and then I didn’t
want it after all. Stupid.
My point is that it did not take me days to recover from all this
screwiness. I was using Time Machine. I booted from the Leopard DVD,
said “Make it Wednesday again,” and let it recopy my whole hard drive.
Poof, problem never happened, and I didn’t lose any work because
documents and projects were all on .Mac or Github. (Prior to Time
Machine I used dirvish, and recovery would have been slightly more
complex but the same principle applied.)
You guys are famous programmers, so I know you must be disciplined
about backups and version control. Why did they fail you? Is it
RSpec’s fault?
Time Machine is especially cool because it backs up hourly.
My criterion has always been, if a meteor annihilates my computer, how long
would it take to get back to work? No meteors yet, but better safe than
sorry.
It’s not sufficient for that scenario, however, because that meteor
would probably take out your nearby external backup drive as well. My
preference is full-drive local backups and then important documents on
the Internet. I have a JungleDisk (virtual network drives on top of
Amazon S3) workgroup account for my podcasting team. It has some
problems with doing live work on it, but for storage or backup it’s
easy and cheap.
But this is getting off-topic. I just wanted to make the point that
blaming an upgrade glitch, however whacked-out it might be, for
cascading code fixes across all projects and losing a couple days of
work was probably unnecessary. A good computer user should have the
power to turn back time. I’m also unsure how moving from RSpec to
three totally separate tools reduces the risk of such dependency
glitches happening again. It wasn’t good that this happened, but
RSpec isn’t the first and only gem ever to cause problems.
On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Stephen E. [email protected] wrote:
My point is that it did not take me days to recover from all this
screwiness. I was using Time Machine. I booted from the Leopard DVD,
said “Make it Wednesday again,” and let it recopy my whole hard drive.
Time Machine is especially cool because it backs up hourly.
My criterion has always been, if a meteor annihilates my computer, how
long
would it take to get back to work? No meteors yet, but better safe than
sorry.
On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Stephen E. [email protected] wrote:
My point is that it did not take me days to recover from all this
screwiness. I was using Time Machine. I booted from the Leopard DVD,
said "Make it Wednesday again," and let it recopy my whole hard drive.
Time Machine is especially cool because it backs up hourly.
My criterion has always been, if a meteor annihilates my computer, how long would it take to
get back to work? No meteors yet, but better safe than sorry.
Chuck Norris protects my computer from meteors and all other
catastrophes. I don’t need no stinkin’ time machine.
