Compared with PHP, I’d say that frameworks reduce the pain of
application development, but they increase the pain of deployment.
Part of the problem is choice (a bad thing, in my view) and another
part is change (again, a bad thing).
Choice is bad because it demands time for the choice. Reading
documentation, reading blogs to get real-world comments, and reading
comparisons – these all take time that would be better spent on
application development.
Change is bad because it may demand continued work on existing
applications. (That’s probably fine for developers who can then earn
part of their living by maintaining existing sites, but it’s a real
pain for academics and others who are making sites to help with other
work, not as an end in itself.)
I just got the (excellent) new Agile Web D. with Rails book,
and it’s a case in point. It says that it’s a bad idea to use fastCGI,
in contradiction to the first volume of the same book. I presume these
authors know whereof they speak, so that’s a real help to me. I can
just ignore any documentation site or blog or entry on this group,
talking about fastCGI. But the switch in advice over just a year (or
so) worries me a lot. That’s why I’m writing this.
I come, finally, to my point. It’s a question.
What is the best deployment strategy, for a new application being
created in early 2007, using pre-release RoR 1.2? (I am using OS X, in
case anyone is interested in helping me directly … but I’m really
asking the question for the benefit of a wider audience.)
Thanks for reading this long post. It’s my first on this group.
Please be gentle.
Actually, deployment is not a pain.
I use my own servers (finding a host, can be difficult), and I can setup
a
rails production environment in 10 minutes.
Steps to deploy an application using gentoo
- emerge ruby
- emerge mysql postgres or whatever
- gem install rails
- gem install mongrel, mongrel_cluster
- emerge apache 2.2.2 (needs unmasking first)
- configure a vhost, start mongrel cluster and that’s it
Php maybe a little easier, but you have a lot of other issues to deal
with.
And, since mongrel serves as an application server, you can distribute
your
app very easily (all you need is the database replication).
It’s not as easy as PHP , but it’s not hard.
dankelley wrote:
What is the best deployment strategy, for a new application being
created in early 2007, using pre-release RoR 1.2? (I am using OS X, in
case anyone is interested in helping me directly … but I’m really
asking the question for the benefit of a wider audience.)
I pretty much follow this to the letter 
http://blog.codahale.com/2006/06/19/time-for-a-grown-up-server-rails-mongrel-apache-capistrano-and-you/
…with an additiona capistrano step to link in a production
database.yml from a secure location at update_code time.
If you don’t need SSL, it scales easily to having multiple apps running
on the same box.
Alan
I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again: what advantages, if any,
are
there to running Apache over Lilghttpd? Everybody seems to be into
Apache
these days, but I’ve found Lighttpd to be much easier to install and
configure than Apache. I suppose the only advantage I can think of for
Apache is the ability to use .htaccess files, but that’s a feature I
would
rarely use anyway.
Jason
I haven’t actually deployed a locally developed Rails application to a
production environment yet but this “guide” to Capistrano looks
promising:
http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/read/book/17
HTH - Greg
On Jan 11, 2007, at 5:01 AM, dankelley wrote:
Choice is bad because it demands time for the choice. Reading
documentation, reading blogs to get real-world comments, and reading
comparisons – these all take time that would be better spent on
application development.
Change is bad because it may demand continued work on existing
applications. (That’s probably fine for developers who can then earn
part of their living by maintaining existing sites, but it’s a real
pain for academics and others who are making sites to help with other
work, not as an end in itself.)
I don’t agree that choice or change are a bad thing, but I do
agree that compared to PHP, RoR deployment can be a challenge.
At a very high level, and a very low level, the choice and change
are a very good thing. It allows a huge amount of architectural
tweaking to be done for those that need it done.
I would recommend that you deploy on nginx or Apache 2.2.x with
mongrel and mongrel_cluster on the back end, for instance, but I
could go into details about the pros and cons of that setup.
When you say you’re using Mac OS X, do you mean for final deployment?
If so, it’s an interesting choice. Mac OS X is ultra-common for
development, but perhaps nearly as ultra-uncommon for deployment.
I’m not suggesting it’s a poor choice. Whatever you’re comfortable
with works for me.
P.S. My company insulates you from choice and change
in RoR deployment.
–
– Tom M., CTO
– Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting
– Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
On Jan 11, 2007, at 5:12 AM, bandito wrote:
Steps to deploy an application using gentoo
- emerge ruby
- emerge mysql postgres or whatever
- gem install rails
- gem install mongrel, mongrel_cluster
- emerge apache 2.2.2 (needs unmasking first)
Best make that 2.2.3 or 2.2.4
- configure a vhost, start mongrel cluster and that’s it
–
– Tom M., CTO
– Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting
– Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
Mongrel now. http://mongrel.rubyforge.org
But you’re right, stuff changes pretty fast in the Ruby scene.
Mongrel+apache, Mongrel+pen (favorite for a small app), Mongrel+nginx,
etc. are good options. Mongrel+pound+lighty is what we use for
SlideShare.
Vish
(too tired to post links right now, google all of these)
I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again: what advantages, if any, are
there to running Apache over Lilghttpd? Everybody seems to be into Apache
these days, but I’ve found Lighttpd to be much easier to install and
configure than Apache. I suppose the only advantage I can think of for
Apache is the ability to use .htaccess files, but that’s a feature I would
rarely use anyway.
Apache 2.2.2 is mostly used because of its mod_proxy_balancer which
proxies
rails reguests to mongrel. Of course, having static content served by
apache does not
hurt either.
Regards,
Rimantas
http://rimantas.com/
Jason N. wrote:
I’ve asked this before, and I’ll ask it again: what advantages, if any, are
there to running Apache over Lilghttpd? Everybody seems to be into Apache
these days, but I’ve found Lighttpd to be much easier to install and
configure than Apache. I suppose the only advantage I can think of for
Apache is the ability to use .htaccess files, but that’s a feature I would
rarely use anyway.
mod_proxy_balancer if you are using Apache 2.2.
–
Michael W.
- emerge apache 2.2.2 (needs unmasking first)
Best make that 2.2.3 or 2.2.4
True. (Ι was still running 2.2.2, haven’t emerged sync for a while).
I’m running a production environment, with 10k visits/day on a rather
demanding setup for a price aggregator with 0.5M products (3-4M queries
per
day).
Apart from some minor problems with mysql, the whole thing works like a
charm.
And the best thing is, with mod_proxy_balancer I can setup another
server in
10 minutes.
B.