Running More Than Rails Applications On Local Mac

Question

I would like to set up several Rails applications running at the same time.

I am using a basic installation with Rails and Mongrel. I'm pretty new when it comes to server side.

What options should I run simultaneously with multiple Rails applications on the local Mac?

Answer 1

The only thing that prevents you from running multiple applications on the same machine is the ports.

If you want to run several applications during development, just use script/server -p <port number> for each of the applications.

If you have a production machine installed, I would recommend that you use a phusion passenger with apache or nginx and configure various virtual machines (or ports)

Answer 2

If you end up using Phusion Passenger, your user preferences panel can automatically configure Apache virtual hosts for you. This is much simpler than editing the Apache configuration and your /etc/hosts every time you want to configure a new application.

Answer 3

Typically, you start the rails server using webrick or mongrel, for example

 script/server 

and

 mongrel_rails start 

respectively, which starts your server on port 3000 by default, i.e. you can access your application on localhost: 3000

To have several applications with rails running on the same computer, just start the servers by going to different application root directories on different ports, for example

 script/server -p 3001 

or

 mongrel_rails start -p 3001 

Just for information, if you want to run rails applications in different environments, then just pass the -e option when you start the server like this:

 script/server -e production 

or

 script/server -e test_or_anyotherenv 

If you do not specify the -e option, it will by default start the server in the development environment.

Answer 4

I am a Django encoder (not Rails), but I think you should start the servers in different ports .

Answer 5

At first, I used mongrel on different ports. Works great. But as agregoire said, Phusion Passenger and Pass-PrefPane make your life a lot easier. Checkout Ryan Bates RailsCast, “Passenger In Development,” for a good set-up guide.