BatU's Stack

For those who are thinking about deploying more than one ruby application on the same machine, and find it tricky to deal with different gem versions, here it is a short guide to having distinct gem paths for each project. I believe it suits small applications running under low load.

I started from a clean Debian installation, however I will assume here that apache2 is already installed and ruby is still not.

Installing RVM

As RVM documentation says, run:

bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )

then follow the instructions to add rvm to your path.

Installing Ruby

Once RVM is installed, running rvm notes will tell you what is required in order to install ruby versions. As I wanted to install the MRI interpreter (at first) I did install the following packages:

aptitude install curl bison build-essential zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline5-dev libreadline6-dev libxml2-dev git-core subversion autoconf

Now we are ready to compile our first ruby interpreter, I chose to install ruby 1.8.7

rvm install 1.8.7-head

I like to run my applications using the Ruby Enterprise Edition interpreter, therefore I installed it:

rvm install ree

I also set it as the default interpreter:

rvm ree --default --passenger

You may be wondering what we need the MRI interpreter for, well, I basically installed it because the REE installation script is written in Ruby.

Installing Passenger

In a nutshell:

gem install passenger
rvmsudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Edit your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (or whatever file inside which you load the passenger module) and set:

PassengerRuby /home/user/.rvm/bin/passenger_ruby

Configuring an application

First of all, we need to create a gemset within which the application required gems will be installed:

rvm gemset create wadusappset
rvm gemset use wadusappset

Now we would do whatever it takes to have the needed gems properly installed (eg rake gems:install or bundle install).

Finally, we are going to tell Passenger where to find the gems. To find that place run:

rvm ree@wadusappset; rvm gemdir

And apply this formula:

GEM_HOME=`rvm ree@wadusappset; rvm gemdir`
GEM_PATH=$GEM_HOME:$GEM_PATH

Now, those environment values are set through the apache mod_env module:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.wadusapp.com
  
  DocumentRoot /var/www/wadusapp/current/public
  
  SetEnv GEM_HOME /home/user/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.01@wadusappset
  SetEnv GEM_PATH /home/user/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.01@wadusappset:/home/user/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.01:/home/user/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.01@global
</VirtualHost>

I did not find a better way of setting the variables so I went with copy & paste.