# Merb configuration options in rails3

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-configuration-options-in-rails3/193039>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 10, 2010, 11:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-configuration-options-in-rails3/193039 "2010-08-10T11:19:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/arai)\
**Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 11:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-configuration-options-in-rails3/193039/1 "2010-08-10T11:19:48Z")

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Hey all,

I’ve used Rails v1 for a little while before switching to Merb, then  
coming back again for rails3. While using merb, I got really  
comfortable using the config files to store configuration directives  
that I wouldn’t need to type at the command line when starting up  
instances:

config/init.rb:  
…  
Merb::Config.use do |c|  
…  
c[:adapter] = :thin  
c[:port] = 1234  
…  
end

As much fun as it is to type “rails s thin -p 1234”, I’d rather just  
use “rails s”, or even “merb”. I’ve spent hours digging through  
google and various documentation projects trying to figure this out,  
how can I do this in rails3?

Thanks.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/arai)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-configuration-options-in-rails3/193039/2 "2010-08-11T18:24:22Z")

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arai wrote:

> As much fun as it is to type “rails s thin -p 1234”, I’d rather just  
> use “rails s”, or even “merb”. I’ve spent hours digging through  
> google and various documentation projects trying to figure this out,  
> how can I do this in rails3?

## Add to ~/.profile (or similar):

alias merb=“rails s thin -p 1234”

## Then do this to activate the alias:

source ~/.profile

(or simply close the terminal window and open a new one)

While not a direct answer this would do precisely what you’re asking.

I use this technique for a number of things like running ./script/server  
by typing ss and ./script/console as sc for Rails 2.x.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@arai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/arai)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2010, 9:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-configuration-options-in-rails3/193039/3 "2010-08-13T09:45:25Z")

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While your alias suggestion is cute, it’s not exactly what I had in  
mind.

My organization has a dev server that runs nginx on port 80 and  
reverse proxies to multiple merb and rails instances at higher ports  
(100XX) on the same box. Not all of these instances are always  
running at the same time, but we can have more than one active at any  
given time, and we map vhosts to ports via nginx ([test.com](http://test.com) is passed  
to 127.0.0.1:10023 for instance).

With merb, one of our techs can spin up an instance with a simple  
command (merb) from the project’s directory and we’re good. With  
rails, we need to know which port corresponds to which project and it  
requires a different command for each project we run, as well as  
mentioning thin.

I understand that there are options that exist outside of rails that  
will allow me to sort of do this from the command line with one simple  
command (even ones that won’t break our merb projects), my question is  
why rails3, an advertised fusion of rails and merb, didn’t borrow that  
good idea from merb and doesn’t support this sort of configuration  
directive from it’s files.

To put it another way, we’re more than happy to patch this in and push  
it upstream, but not if it’s just going to get rejected by the core  
team.

Thanks