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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T05:27:21+00:00

I run an instance of a rails application that is developed by another team.

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I run an instance of a rails application that is developed by another team. Back when I started, the common way to deploy Rails apps was to use Mongrel behind Apache, and that’s the configuration that that team used for their own instances. Since I’m a Windows guy, and since both Apache and Mongrel can easily be set up as Windows services, I used a (virtual) Windows box and set up everything there.

I guess since than things changed in Rails land. Mongrel has stagnated (at least that’s my impression of the common perception). The team developing my app has switched to using mod_rails a while back. I have not concerned myself with all this, since my Mongrel setup continued to work, until the last time I synced with their code. Apparently, there’s a name conflict where they created a ‘Service’ model, which clashes with a module name in mongrel_service (see http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/ruby-rails/3497181 ). When I asked them to rename the model, they said they’re not interested in supporting Mongrel.

Is Mongrel still a valid option for Rails applications? If not, is there a valid alternative for deploying under Windows? Neither mod_rails nor Thin run under Windows… Or should I just bite the bullet, give up on Windows deployment, and rebuild my VM as a Linux box?

To clarify: The VM where this runs is not on my development desktop. It’s a VM that our IT department hosts, used in production. I have admin on it. I can get IT to set up a Linux VM instead if I must.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This doesn’t directly answer your question but personally I’d bite the bullet and move to Linux, install Apache and Passenger and go with it like that. Installing Ubuntu Server and installing the aforementioned is a pretty painless experience and you should be up and running within an hour or two at most.

    In the past, this is the approach I’ve used and really the only barrier to this would be the learning curve if you don’t have much/any experience with Linux and/or Apache. It might be worth checking out the “Linux for Softies” series on TekPub which cover setting up this very stack.

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