Deploying RoR is HARD....from a beginner's perspective

rubyonrails-talk
1

So I've finally been seduced by the hype that is RoR and have now gone hog-wild buying books and downloading as many resources as I can. I'm a Lotus Notes/Domino professional and have always done all of my web app development in Domino. I've stuck with Lotus because it offers a fantastic RAD platform which allows me to throw together a totally functional prototype in less than a day. Deployment is a non- issue...I can either develop directly on the server or locally and then just replicate to the server. Really, it's that simple. There are some drawbacks, however.

1. It's not free. 2. Writing LotusScript and Java Agents is not the most elegant programming experience in the world. 3. It just feels incredibly clumsy and "old school" at times and it can be a real pain to implement the latest and greatest whiz-bang interface elements for which I'm such a sucker.

I'm not planning on abandoning the platform altogether as that would be impossible to do given that I work in the DC area and all of my clients are DOD. It's hard enough trying to keep them from ditching IBM for M$ so I don't think RoR would really go very far any time soon. I would definitely love to start free-lancing and if all of what the marketing says is true then RoR seems like something that I've been dreaming of for some time. It's something that I thought I'd found in Java a while back but quickly found that it was ridiculously bloated and complex. I don't want to waste alot of time dealing with complexity...I just want to build something functional in a small amount of time.

I want a web development platform that is truly object-oriented and will essentially allow me to better focus on the actual design of the application instead of spending so much time trying to work my way through the complexities of the "nuts and bolts" and logic. When I say design, I'm not talking actual aesthetic design although that is the part I most enjoy. I'm referring to how the application actually works - being able to sit back and think the whole thing through and basically identify all of the parts I'll need to put together in order to build my app. I want these parts to essentially be built already for the most part and I simply want to be able to grab them out of a "tool box" and put them into place within my application. I want to be able to have the majority of the application "framework" ready for me to customize and tailor to the needs of my project. RoR seems like it can do all of this AND provide me with the tools I need out of the box to satisfy my obsession with shiny, whiz-bang interfaces.

So I've downloaded InstantRails, RadRails and bought lots of books. I went out and bought a hosting account at RailsPlayground and thought this would be as simple as me grabbing an example application and monkeying around with it until I got the basic idea of how to make things work my way. Here is the obsticle I'm facing right now....

Deploying an application seems like a major PITA. I've got this hosting account and I thought that putting my application on the web would be as simple as FTPing the app folder over to my account..kindof like it is with DreamWeaver. Wrong. It appears that I have to actually know my way around Linux and I absolutely cringe at command line interfaces. I'm hopelessly hooked on GUIs as they're all I've ever known and the thought of not having one is pretty spooky. It's alot like being told that I have to ditch electronic communication and go back to pen and paper + snail mail. Not cool. Is this just something that I'm going to have to get over if I hope to go deep into RoR? Is there a dreamweaver-type IDE out there for RoR that allows me to deploy my app to the server with the click of a mouse? Can someone out there either point me in the direction of my GUI life-raft or shatter my delusions and tell me I need to learn Linux in addition to RoR?

I really want to just dig in and put something together, not spend weeks learning my way around command-line interfaces and such. While I know that there's probably no WYSIWYG IDE for RoR out there, is there something that will at least let me get my app on the web with ease? Any help would be greatly appreciated. One of the things that draws me to RoR is the community surrounding it. I look forward to hopefully interacting with all of you and contributing as much as I can.

2

Adam Keith Burrell wrote:

...I've stuck with Lotus because it offers a fantastic RAD platform which allows me to throw together a totally functional prototype in less than a day.

Fantastic, if you don't mind (as I have heard) that Lotus Notes fiercely resists automated tests. That is a major indicator of logical problems with the core of a development platform, however nice all the peripheral items may be...

Your post doesn't contain the term "Capistrano". Install that, learn to use it (that's a little hard), and after it works then deployment becomes once again a non-issue...

3

Thanks so much. I will try to get Capistrano working. I have installed it but get errors everytime I try to run the Cap command on my application.

C:\Instant13\InstantRails\rails_apps>cap --apply-to ~/rails-apps/typo- 2.6.0 C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb :21:in require__': couldn't find HOME environment -- expanding ~/rails-apps/ty po-2.6.0/config/environment’ (ArgumentError)

    from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/cust

om_require.rb:21:in require' from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1. 4.0/lib/capistrano/generators/rails/loader.rb:5:in load!’

    from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.

4.0/lib/capistrano/cli.rb:276:in `execute_apply_to!’ from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.

4.0/lib/capistrano/cli.rb:237:in execute!' from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1. 4.0/lib/capistrano/cli.rb:12:in execute!’ from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.

4.0/bin/cap:11 from C:/Instant13/InstantRails/ruby/bin/cap:18

Do you see anything obvious here? I’m assuming that nothing is working because I don’t see a deploy.rb file in the app config directory. I’m not quite sure what a SVR is and I’m pretty sure that I’ve never created in my RailsPlayground hosting environment. Is this something that is there by default?

-Adam

4

Hi Adam,

Adam Keith Burrell wrote

Deploying an application seems like a major PITA. I've got this hosting account and I thought that putting my application on the web would be as simple as FTPing the app folder over to my account.

Depends on what hosting service you're using. There's a lot of variation. My sys admin skills are nil, so I looked around and settled on an account with a2hosting.com. Deploying was pretty much just like what you're looking for, as Rails is already installed. You have to create a database but that was easy using cPanel. Copied my code over, set up the db, entered a ticket to get them to put mongrel in front of it. Good to go. Their support is fantastic and I highly recommend them. If I can do it, I'd say anybody can :wink:

hth, Bill

5

Adam Burrell wrote:

Thanks so much. I will try to get Capistrano working. I have installed it but get errors everytime I try to run the Cap command on my application.

What howto are you reading?

Does your ISP support Rails? If not, getting another ISP might be more cost-effective than muddling forever installing Rails on the server. Cap don't do that.

If your ISP supports Rails, what's their Howto for Capistrano?

6

cap --apply-to ~/rails-apps/typo- 2.6.0

"~" represents a UNIX home folder. Given you are on windows, this isn't really around. Try using Windows conventions to refer to the root folder of your application.

-Kyle

7

I think I’ll just head back to my Mac to dig into this. It’s just too frustrating on Windows. Thanks anyway.

On another note, it seems that my isp (RailsPlayground) provides instructions on doing what it is that I’m trying to do (Install Typo) so hopefully I’ll get it straight sooner than later.

8

Prime example -

I’m simply trying to install typo on my hosted account. I’m following the rules provided by my ISP and am running into issues left and right. Shouldn’t it be as simple as me uploading the application to the server and pointing apache to my app? I hate to draw comparisons but in Domino, this would be as simple as me uploading the app to the server. If I need to redirect my url to it I simply setup a redirection document. Oh well, this isn’t Domino and I need to learn the rails way…

-Adam

9

Adam Burrell said the following on 02/10/2007 07:05 PM:

Prime example -

I'm simply trying to install typo on my hosted account. I'm following the rules provided by my ISP and am running into issues left and right. Shouldn't it be as simple as me uploading the application to the server and pointing apache to my app? I hate to draw comparisons but in Domino, this would be as simple as me uploading the app to the server. If I need to redirect my url to it I simply setup a redirection document. Oh well, this isn't Domino and I need to learn the rails way....

BTDT. Its about familiarity. I had no problems deploying Typo (on Dreamhost) without reading instructions. They're Linux; I'm used to Linux.

If I tried deploying anything in Domino I'd be having the same frustrations as you are with Typo; I'm not familiar with it.

Persist. We were all beginners once :slight_smile:

10

Adam Burrell wrote:

I'm simply trying to install typo on my hosted account. I'm following the rules provided by my ISP

I meant "your ISP's instrunctions on installing on your site via Capistrano". Like this:

http://wiki.railsplayground.com/railsplayground/show/How+To+Use+Capistrano+With+RailsPlayground

( http://tinyurl.com/2g22f3 )

and am running into issues left and right.

If your ISP doesn't support Capistrano, then you are stuck at the bottom of the learning curve. Setting a Rails site up thru a SSH login is like assembling one of those model ships inside a bottle, via long tweezers and such. Without assembling the ship outside the bottle and then sneaking it in.

11

Adam Burrell wrote:

I think I'll just head back to my Mac to dig into this. It's just too frustrating on Windows. Thanks anyway.

On another note, it seems that my isp (RailsPlayground)

Uh, I found those instructions hard to follow, and I already had non-trivial Capistrano (and SVN) experience. I advise the admin to upgrade the docs. You must start here, despite the "Guru" in the title implies this is the advanced stuff. It is, instead, the getting started stuff. You must set an SVN account up:

http://wiki.railsplayground.com/railsplayground/show/diff/How+To+Use+Capistrano+with+the+Guru+Plan

( http://tinyurl.com/yv72o7 )

Ask support@ themselves for more details there!

Next, if you get this far, Apache refuses to serve public or public/dispatch.* if any of their permissions are _too_ permissive, such as chmod 775. They must be 755. I added this cap task to my config/deploy.rb:

  run 'chmod 755 ~/champion/current/public ' +                 '~/champion/current/public/dispatch*'

Not to keep you in suspense, here's my entire deploy.rb, which has worked for a while, with the sensitive details masked; ### for the project name, %%% for the site name, and *** for the Linux/SSH user name, and 'phlip' for the SVN user name. (Note that the project and site names are _different_; that's a software engineering Best Practice, for if your client needs to perform the Replace Owner Refactor...)

set :user, '***' set :svn_username, 'phlip' set :svn_password, ENV['SVN_PASSWORD'] set :server, '%%%.railsplayground.net' set :application, "###" set :repository, "http://%%%.svnrepository.com/svn/###/trunk" role :web, server role :app, server role :db, server, :primary => true

set :deploy_to, "/home/#{user}/#{application}"

task :restart, :roles => :app do   run 'chmod 755 ~/###/current/public ' +                 '~/###/current/public/dispatch*' end

12

Adam–

I’d venture a guess that deployment was never as easy as “just sync’ing” or FTPing. You have to create databases, some security measures need to be in place to make sure you’re not scribbling madly all over system files, and so on. You’re just used to the hoops you’ve been jumping, not the Rails hoops.

Rails is not well supported by a GUI, and many would say that’s a good thing. GUIs are wonderful for abstracting underlying OS stuff out of your mental working set, but you’re still performing the same actions as you would at a command line. The problem with relying on a GUI too much is that it can lull you into forgetting about how your code really interacts with the environment in which it runs. Maybe typing in Linux commands is a bit closer to the metal than you expected in the first decade of the 21st Century, but it seems that most successful Rails developers are doing just that.

One reason I moved away from heavily IDE-centric development was that the environments kept making decisions for me and they were not great choices. I wound up with brittle code left in simply to keep the IDEs from spitting up chunks. In every way, I would say that shedding the bulky IDEs has been liberating.

Oh, and you can actually FTP a Rails app up to a server and start it. I recommend Capistrano, as it makes deployment predictable and rollback easy. But just for your comfort, understand that Rails apps are still just a collection of files and they can get to the server any old way you want. What you cannot do with a Rails app is make a wholesale in-situ replacement of the application by copying it. That’s because Rails relies on loading certain parts of the framework once per serving process and never again until a server restart. Sure, you can replace a controller or view periodically, but with Capistrano, you’ll probably discover that deploying the whole app is as easy as copying any given file.

Good luck and press on!

13

s.ross wrote:

I recommend Capistrano

This is an interesting question for the Rails FAQ: Does Rails "recommend" Capistrano, or does Rails "require" it. Of course you can go SFTP-crazy and get a running Rails site (including Ruby stuffed into the ~/bin folder, if you like, and including manually stopping and starting the web server). Is there any other productized solution besides Cap??

About IDEs, the best IDE for a programmer is a command line with the option to write wrong command lines, but where short command lines are easy. 'rake deploy' is just a button, now.

14

rsync? Nobody's thought it through (AFAIK) as well as has been done in Cap, but I'd be surprised if Komodo and/or Steel don't come up with something that either provides similar functionality or wraps Capistrano at some point.

As cool as Capistrano is, relying on it doing "magic" is not the right thing to do. If you rely on Capistrano magic, you'll get by a lot of the time, but the one time when you want to tweak a deployment, you won't understand how the darn thing works in the first place. That's why it's so useful to copy files up to the server and set the permissions and tweak around with the servers and blah, blah at least once so you understand all the goodness you're getting from Cap.

Hey wait. You're still going to have to mess around with the servers. All Capistrano can do is restart them. You have to apply the critical thinking involved in properly configuring them for the mix of pages you expect to server and the load they are expected to handle.

See, this is the Web-scripting myth: You can throw anything at a Web server and it will happily churn out pages no matter what. Behind the scenes of every high performing Web site are people thinking about what the best Web server technology for the job might be. Developers have to be involved in this kind of thing. No IDE or deployment tool gets around that. And to the OP, this is not stuff unique to RoR -- it's always lurking there.

15

s.ross wrote:

As cool as Capistrano is, relying on it doing "magic" is not the right thing to do. If you rely on Capistrano magic, you'll get by a lot of the time, but the one time when you want to tweak a deployment, you won't understand how the darn thing works in the first place. That's why it's so useful to copy files up to the server and set the permissions and tweak around with the servers and blah, blah at least once so you understand all the goodness you're getting from Cap.

A good way to look at this: Capistrano is DRY.

Using Capistrano, you Don't need to Repeat Yourself.

For example, I noticed my webserver kacked on a public/ folder with permissions of chmod 775.

(Because I followed your advice, and built many websites the old fashioned way, I know what "chmod" means. [And I know how icky those web servers are that don't have the elegant simplicity of chmod to rely on!])

So I manually ran chmod 755 public a couple times.

Then I got inside deploy.rb, and added run 'chmod 755 public'.

Capistrano allows me to Don't Repeat Myself. It took over this menial task, so I didn't have to do it over and over again.

And this rescued me from the terrors of researching who or what was setting my public folder to 775.

16

To paraphrase Laurence Oliver:

Son, you need to learn how to program.

I'm hopelessly hooked on GUIs as they're all I've

17

Hi Adam,

I too am relatively new with Rails, so apologies to the rest of you if what I say is naive or inaccurate, but at least my process gave me some success on bluehost, though probably my hosted apps are still in deployment mode, since i saw no difference changing the setting environment.rb to production.

But I have yet to read the deployment chapter in version 2 of Agile Web Development with Rails. Thats a book I love by the way!

I use a Mac so you may need to make some conversions, I found Rails development much nicer on a Mac compared to Windows, though intial installation can be fiddly. The main issue is the different rails installation on my webhost.

So the way i deploy an application (on bluehost), is:

1. create the db, with the webhosts DB tools, or you can use something like CocoaMysql (nice GUI), but then you will need your host to allow the connection via the appropriate port, and you will need a static IP address. 2. From a terminal (try cygwin on windows, maybe that will work for you) change to the user that your webhost expects you to be (I created a special user for that in my prefs) "su" (admin), then just type "su username" 3. ssh in to the host and go to rails dev directory. (type "ssh your address", and then password), then "cd" to the rails dev directory. 4. "rails newapp", creates a new app (this is done because your host will have a different rails installation from you, and caused me to become unstuck sometimes) 5. ftp up and overwrite   - the app directory   - db directory or parts of it if this is the second time around 6. Edit:   - database.yml : user and password should be what ever you set up on the host.   - change appropriate stuff on the server in routes.rb   - delete default/index.html 7. Run a rake process to create the DB schema "rake migrate"

8. create new subdomain in the host (look at your host directions for this) and point it to your new rails app.

Let me know if anything is unclear, since i copied this list from my notes.

I have some web services which let me synchronise data in the DBs between the local machine and webhost, let me know if you need tips for that, though that was much easier than deployment. J

18

Neil Wilson said the following on 02/11/2007 05:17 AM:

To paraphrase Laurence Oliver:

Son, you need to learn how to program.

I'm hopelessly hooked on GUIs as they're all I've

ever known and the thought of not having one is pretty spooky.

See http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html and In the Beginning... Was the Command Line - Wikipedia

And that "Neal" not "Neil".

And ow do you think those GUIs make use of the system command that they front for?

19

Fantastic! I'll be in line for it when it comes out.

Thanks to everyone for their responses so far. I hammered at it most of the night and eventually found out that Typo doesn't work on my hosted server (per the hosting admin) and I was able to successfully install and configure Mephisto, which is pretty nice. Now my next step is to work through the new book "Build your own..." by sitepoint and build my "Digg clone" app. I think I'm going to stick with FTP and learn how to get everything set myself for now. I was able to get RadRails to work with my site using the subversion repository. I feel like it might be possible for me to just use that setup but something tells me that I'll need to set permissions or tweak the server in some way regardless. I have the "Agile Web Development with Rails" book so maybe it's got some good deployment info in it. Combined with all of the great resources you all have pointed me to so far, I think I'll be okay. I do need to say that the support at RailsPlayground so far has been outstanding and very responsive.

Also, I'm primarily a Mac user (Macintosh obsessive is more like it) and was only using a Windows machine because I don't have a Mac laptop right now and I needed to work on a laptop. I'm hoping to spring for a MacBook in the next month or so. I was actually turned onto RoR by one of the geniuses at the Apple store where I worked most of last year. It's great that they're actually going to put Rails w/ Mongrel in Leopard server. That combined with all of the other services built in are going to make it pretty hard to pass up. I recently got to take a peek at the Wiki server that they've built in and it's gorgeous. It's something that Apple has built themselves and it's going to be quite useful.

-Adam

20

Adam,

If you add the MasterView plugin to your rails app then you can write view templates that are editable via a standard WYSIWYG html editor like NVU. We have also designed it to have the full power of Rails, using layouts, partials, and helpers. It has a scaffold generator that can get you closer to production ready CRUD than the default one. There is a couple videos about how it works on http://masterview.org/

I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Blessings,

Jeff