Question

I’m trying to deploy my Rails 3.0.1 application which works with Ruby 1.9.2.

However, I noticed that Rails 1.8.7 is installed on the server.

What steps should I take to install Ruby 1.9.2 on the server, and force my application to use it ?

I use Apache and Passenger.

Answer 1

I would recommend installing RVM and using that to set the version of Ruby that you want on the server.

Here’s a rundown of its advantages in a production environment:

RVM allows users to deploy each
project with its own completely
self-contained and dedicated
environment–from the specific version
of ruby all the way down to the
precise set of required gems to run
the application. Having a precise set
of gems also avoids the issue of
version conflicts between projects,
causing difficult-to-trace errors and
hours of hair loss. With RVM, NO OTHER
GEMS than those required are
installed. This makes working with
multiple complex applications where
each has a long list of gem
dependencies efficient. RVM allows us
to easily test gem upgrades by
switching to a new clean set of gems
to test with while leaving our
original set intact. It is flexible
enough to even have a set of gems per
environment or development branch–or
even individual developer’s taste!

It’s very easy to setup and use, especially compared to managing the Ruby versions yourself. I’ve done both and I prefer RVM much more now. Once you have RVM installed, using Ruby 1.9.2 is as easy as:

rvm install 1.9.2
rvm use 1.9.2

And then you can check which version of Ruby your production environment is using with:

ruby -v