Locomotivation

Multi-tasking, Rails style

If you’re like me, you often find yourself flipping between two or three different Rails projects. Each time you flip, you do the same little dance in Terminal:

wynn$ cd projects/blog 
wynn$ mate . 
wynn$ script/server

You code along happily on the first project, knock out a couple of bugs, and then it’s time to switch. Either you stop your first mongrel server and dance the terminal jig all over again, or you just cmd+T a new terminal tab and crank up project two on a different port, like :3001 (and remember to specify the new port when you crank up your browser).

Phusion Passenger, not just for your production boxes

Passenger eliminates the need to start up your own mongrel server for each of your development Rails apps. Just like your PHP days, you simply set up an Apache virtual host for each app, and Passenger does the rest.

Step 1: Set up your host names

To set up your host aliases for each domain you want to use, edit your /etc/hosts file. Here’s mine:

127.0.0.1 beta.mindbites.local
127.0.0.1 mindbites.local

Step 2: Install Phusion Passenger

Assuming you have Apache2 installed (bundled with Leopard, an apt-get install away on Ubuntu):

sudo gem install passenger 
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

The install script will chug away for a few minutes. Once on the other side, you’re only a couple steps away from multi-tasking bliss.

Step 3: Set up your virtual host

On OSX, you’ll need to use Headdress or modify /etc/apache2/httpd.conf with your virtual hosts:

NameVirtualHost *  
<VirtualHost *:80> 
        DocumentRoot /Users/wynn/projects/mindbites/public 
    ServerName mindbites.local 
    ServerAlias beta.mindbites.local 
    RailsEnv development 
    <directory "/Users/wynn/projects/mindbites/public">    
        Options FollowSymLinks    
        AllowOverride None    
        Order allow,deny    
        Allow from all 
    </directory> 
</virtualhost>  
<VirtualHost *:80>> 
    DocumentRoot /Users/wynn/projects/blog/public 
    ServerName locomotivation.local 
    RailsEnv development 
    <directory "/Users/wynn/projects/blog/public">
        Options FollowSymLinks    
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
     </directory> 
</virtualhost>  
<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /Users/wynn/projects/goalistics/public 
    ServerName goalistics.local 
    RailsEnv development 
    <directory "/Users/wynn/projects/goalistics/public">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny 
        Allow from all
  </directory> 
</virtualhost>

After initially setting up my virtuals, I discovered that only the first one worked. A quick look on Google pointed me to the NameVirtualHost * directive which solved the problem. Note that the DocumentRoot /Users/wynn/projects/goalistics/public directive points to the public folder within your Rails app, not the root. Second, you’ll need to include the directory overrides in the Directory block to allow Apache to serve up your static content. (I was shocked when my app was served up naked the first time).

Also note that the RailsEnv directive determines the RAILS_ENV for the application and is production by default.

Wrap-up

I’ve been really pleased with Phusion Passenger so far. I discovered one hiccup, though. Passenger does not seem to care for inline ERB code in your database.yml so I had to side step some dynamic configuration we were doing. Error pages from Phusion are much nicer on the eyes though than the standard Rails versions. Also, restarting Rails applications are as easy as bouncing Apache or:

sudo touch tmp/restart.txt

from the project root. Passenger is definitely worth a look on your development machine.