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I have run into problems getting my local php and rails development environments to play nicely with each other on OSX 10.7.

Developing is a hobby, and I am a total noob. I use MAMP for developing in PHP. A few months a ago I decided to give RoR a whirl, and set up a dev environment using Passenger.

A couple of weeks ago I reinstalled MAMP when I noticed I could not access the MAMP sites.

Now I can't access the RoR sites. I've tried reinstalling Passenger. I still get the error "Oops! Google Chrome could not find app.local" when I type the local URL. If I navigate to localhost, I get an "It Works!" page, so something is being served.

I have experimented with Pow. The server seems to work if I navigate to localhost, but when I go to the app I get a rake not found error. Strange, as all the gems worked under Passenger. I've since uninstalled Pow.

So I have three questions.

1) How do I troubleshoot my setup to find out what is going wrong? I'm guessing it is an issue with the Apache server (though I could be very wrong). Where should I look for log files to help resolve this?

2) What is the best way to set up a local dev environment so that I can switch easily between RoR and PHP? (I know that virtualization is an option, but would prefer not to go down this route, unless there is a very good reason to).

3) Can anyone recommend a good guide or source of info for beginners on setting up dev environments? I have read a lot of different things online, but need to get a better grasp of the basics - i.e., understanding where gem files etc are being installed, proper use of bash files, macports vs homebrew, passenger vs pow etc.

Thanks for taking the time to help a frustrated beginner.

Andy

aWebDeveloper
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Andy Harvey
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  • Though i dont use mac i think its a port problem – aWebDeveloper Nov 05 '11 at 09:21
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    I wouldn't use Passenger for development if I were you. I just use WEBrick that comes with rails and runs by default on port 3000. Your application will be accessible via `http://localhost:3000/`. For PHP you can use MAMP, which runs on port 80 and thus will be accessible via `http://localhost/`. If you run your web servers on different ports, I don't think you will have any issues. – Mischa Nov 05 '11 at 09:25
  • @mischa thanks for the suggestion. What are the advantages of webrick over mongrel? I initially went with passenger due to the ease of switching between dev apps without restarting servers. – Andy Harvey Nov 05 '11 at 15:28
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    Passenger is great for local dev if you have a lot of apps you're working on. But the huge advantage of webrick is that you can use a debugger. That, to me, offsets any convenience of not having to start/stop servers or keep track of ports for different apps. For dev, I wouldn't sweat mongrel vs webrick. Just "rails s" and go. – JofoCodin Nov 05 '11 at 15:45
  • @JofoCodin thanks for the tip. I will take another look at the built in servers. Can you recommend any guidelines on launching and using the debugger? – Andy Harvey Nov 05 '11 at 16:11

1 Answers1

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OK, I'm going to answer my own question. I have got the rails apps running locally, but I still don't feel confident that I fully understand what's happening.

This is what I did.

Uninstalled Passenger

gem uninstall passenger

Uninstalled Passenger PrefPane by right clicking in system preference.

Updated all system gems

gem update --system

cd'd to app directory and updated all app gems

bundle update

Reinstalled Passenger

gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module

Recompiled Passenger Prefpane for OSX 10.7 using xcodebuild and installed.

Deleted and readded apps to passnger prefpane.

I'm not sure what fixed it, but the apps are now running. This is what I think happened. Somehow the configuration between Passenger and Apache had become corrupt, and reinstalling prefpane added the correct lines back into the Apache config file.

The problem is that I stil don't know which Apache install Passenger is using- mac default, macports, or MAMP. I think this is what confused me before, as the config file I was checking was not the correct one.

As a byproduct, I have learned that several of my gems were not up to date or missing dependencies. This may explain the difficulties I experienced with Pow. If so, the Pow seems to be a much easier alternative to Passenger.

So, things are up and running, but I still have a long way to go before I understand how all these configuration files a working. I still don;t think I'm using the Apache install that I would prefer to use!

EDIT

PS: MAMP is also still working for PHP development, and I can easily switch between the two by disabling web sharing in system preferences, and launching MAMP. So all issues resolved for now!

Andy Harvey
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