# Mongrel in development **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 19, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031 "2009-08-19T18:05:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/1 "2009-08-19T18:05:57Z")
A newbie Q here… In the default leopard env. Is mongrel serving dev rails apps without sitting behind apache? In know on a production env apache or nginx etc. Is a required part of the stack. The reason I ask is, when I shut down apache on my dev machine script/server still works. Any insight on this? Thanks, Elliott ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/2 "2009-08-19T19:25:34Z")
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 09:04:52AM -0700, elliottg wrote: > A newbie Q here… > > In the default leopard env. Is mongrel serving dev rails apps without > sitting behind apache? > In know on a production env apache or nginx etc. Is a required part of > the stack. The reason I ask is, when I shut down apache on my dev > machine script/server still works. script/server starts a single process (mongrel, webrick etc) which you connect to directly. You don’t need to have apache, nginx or any other webserver running. I moved away from script/server when passenger made it so easy to develop using apache, but you can stick with script/server as long as you like. Whatever is easier in your situation. HTH Matt H. ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/3 "2009-08-19T19:32:01Z")
Thanks Matt. That clears some things up for me. I didn’t realize Mongrel could stand alone. I am actually trying to switch over to Passenger as that will be my new Production env. and I want to develop in a similar env… I am having some issues getting Passenger running though cause of some system issues on my machine. What’s your thoughts on running Mongrel on my dev box and Passenger in production? Thanks man. On Aug 19, 1:22 pm, Matt H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/4 "2009-08-19T19:51:56Z")
I hear you on that. Thanks for your time! EG On Aug 19, 1:38 pm, Matt H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/5 "2009-08-19T19:39:38Z")
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 10:29:57AM -0700, elliottg wrote: > production? > Mongrel used to be very popular before passenger came along. You could > run > many mongrel processes on different ports, then have apache or another > webserver/load balancer route the requests to them. This made the > applications multi-threaded. Now a lot of people use passenger which requires less maintenance and setup, and does pretty much the same thing quietly. As for your last question…I’m not an expert but I’m guessing that you might one day run into a problem on passenger that didn’t happen on mongrel in development (or vice versa). Ideally I think you should be using the same software on both dev and prod, but that’s maybe just me. I think it depends a lot on your applications, if you are using complex gems or features, then developing on different server software might cause you problems when you deploy to production. These are just how I see things, others may well have different views. Matt H. ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/6 "2009-08-19T20:02:39Z")
Elliott G. wrote: […] > What’s your thoughts on running Mongrel on my dev box and Passenger in > production? That’s what I do. It hasn’t been a problem at all. I don’t really see much point in putting Passenger on my laptop. Maybe if I had a computer that I used only for Web development (for example, if I had an office job), things would be different. But I just don’t see much advantage, since Passenger doesn’t appear to mess with the apps it serves. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/32.png) [@elliottg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/elliottg)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-in-development/174031/7 "2009-08-19T20:43:50Z")
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote: > Elliott G. wrote: > […] > > > What’s your thoughts on running Mongrel on my dev box and Passenger in > > production? > > That’s what I do. It hasn’t been a problem at all. I don’t really see > much point in putting Passenger on my laptop. Same here. I use mongrel for development mostly because I don’t generally run Apache at all on my development box. I don’t see the point of having Apache/Passenger running all the time just to run my Rails apps. This is pretty much all about user preference, so do whatever you find works for you. I just try to run as few services on my development machine as possible and Apache is not generally requires. I don’t browse web sites stored on my own laptop. I figure the fewer services I have running, the more secure my environment is for day-to-day use. Not that I’m concerned about the security of Apache. That being said, I’m sure there are some advantages of running Apache/Passenger on your development box, but I don’t think application server differences are going to be a major issue. I would expect to have more issues in production, but due to load rather than what application server is used. Matt H. wrote: > Ideally I think you should be using the > same software on both dev and prod, but that’s maybe just me. While I see some merit to this, there is actually some advantage to having different environments for development and production. 1. I happen to develop on a Mac, which provides me with a lot of design tools, and an excellent development environment that I find advantageous over other alternatives. However, I generally deploy to Linux servers. 2. Having different environments helps to ensure that I’m not creating issues that might bind me to a specific deployment environment. I even tend to use a different database in development than what I use in production. This helps ensure that the code I write is database agnostic. I do think that a staging server that matches your production environment would be very useful for critical web sites. On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 09:04:52AM -0700, elliottg wrote: > In know on a production env apache or nginx etc. Is a required part of > the stack. Actually, this is not entirely true, but it might as well be. You could very well run a production application directly with Mongrel, or Thin or whatever. This would be rather silly, but it’s certainly possible if the traffic is low enough.