# Distributing a rails application

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 18, 2008, 5:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911 "2008-12-18T05:25:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/1 "2008-12-18T05:25:37Z")

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What are the standard best practices for sharing your rails application  
on the web?

As far as I can tell, you just delete the logs directory and clear out  
the database.yml

What am I forgetting?

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**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/2 "2008-12-18T05:31:02Z")

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Github!

All the entries from my .gitignore file:

log/_.log  
log/searchd_  
tmp/\*  
db/_.sqlite3  
db/sphinx/_  
config/database.yml  
test  
coverage  
coverage/\*  
config/\*.sphinx.conf  
config/deploy.rb

* * *

Ryan B.  
Freelancer

> **[frozenplague.net](http://frozenplague.net)**
>
> This domain may be for sale!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/3 "2008-12-18T05:34:32Z")

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why ignore the test dir? dont you want to share those?

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**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/4 "2008-12-18T17:42:15Z")

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Little K. wrote:

> What are the standard best practices for sharing your rails application  
> on the web?
> 
> As far as I can tell, you just delete the logs directory and clear out  
> the database.yml
> 
> What am I forgetting?

To share with other programmers, you develop out of an open version  
control hub  
such as RubyForge or GitHub (?). Don’t commit your logs or database.yml,  
but do  
commit a database.yml.example with a scrubbed copy of your private  
database.yml.

To share with end-users, you should key your database to a Group model,  
which  
has many Staff model objects. When a Staff logs in, they only see  
database  
records in their Group. Then you can sell your app - as a service - to  
as many  
Groups as you can qualify, and each group cannot see the other groups’  
data.

–  
Phlip

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/5 "2008-12-18T17:45:47Z")

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Ryan B. wrote:

> I have a spec dir, not a test dir.

Don’t brag! (-:

–  
Phlip

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@littleknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/littleknown)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 6:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/distributing-a-rails-application/155911/6 "2008-12-18T06:12:32Z")

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## I have a spec dir, not a test dir.

Ryan B.  
Freelancer

> **[frozenplague.net](http://frozenplague.net)**
>
> This domain may be for sale!