Rails and OS X

I spent hours today getting a Ruby on Rails application running on an OS X 10.5.2 server.

The problems were numerous but, honestly, it took so long mainly because I never use OS X and didn't have familiarity with some things that I thoroughly understand in Linux and Windows.

Before I could even begin the process, I had to export the tagged version from my company's CVS repository. CVS cannot export empty directories. From the CVS manual:

(Note that cvs export always removes empty directories.) Probably the best way to do this is to always specify `-P'; if you want an empty directory then put a dummy file (for example `.keepme') in it to prevent `-P' from removing it.

The person who initially applied the version tag didn't know to take care with the empty directories. As a result, I had to add an empty '.cvsignore' file into each directory, commit those dozens of .cvsignore files, and then tag them. That wasn't a big deal to do with "find" once I knew what was needed. This was a shotgun approach but was benign.

First, I could not get mysql to listen to the TCP/IP interface despite what was in the /etc/my.cnf file. Turns out that one has to fiddle with the setting with:
serveradmin settings mysql:allowNetwork = yes
(Is that going to persist after a reboot?)

Second, I couldn't get the C-based mysql ruby gem installed. I simply didn't have the header and library files against which it could build. This should not have been a big deal except that there wasn't a clear source package to download from the mysql site. I had to rely on a tech. support person to do that.

Finally, I had to make sure that the various mongrel instances would start automatically. That took some doing and I finally got them configured using launchd and launchctl. Launchd functions as a complete replacement for inetd, init.d, cron, and a few other things. Basically, one has to configure some XML files. It took some time to get my xml files just right.

One weird thing that I encountered is that if I told the mongrel service to bind to the "localhost" interface it would only do so using IP v.6. I had to specifically tell it to use "127.0.0.1" to coerce it to use IP v.4.

The Good:
Once I got into launchd, I began to appreciate how it could simplify a lot of the traditional unix utilities and configurations.

The Bad:
OS X and running Rails on OS X is a niche market for my company. I can't help but to think what a waste of time this was because I won't be able to leverage this experience over many installations. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to because I have zero interest in OS X.

The Ugly:
In reading the launchd documentation, the Apple folks come off as unjustifiably arrogant. Check out this quote from http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html:

If this is not sufficient for your job, you need to modify your program or file an enhancement request against launchd with Apple.