Question

Is it possible to switch from Ruby 1.8.7 to 1.9.2 when restarting a Rails app that is deployed on Passenger? It should be possible to change PassengerRuby in httpd.conf and restarting Apache. I want to know how it can be done without restarting Apache every time.

More info: We have two different apps, one on Rails 2.3.8 and one on 3.0.5 with the same name, and want to switch between them for testing purposes.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes you can switch which versions of ruby you use. Life is easy when you use rvm (http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/). Then you can install the passenger gem in different ruby environments, and when you do it in each environment, the passenger-install-apache2-module command will tell you what to put in the apache config file. For example, mine is now (mac osx – should be similar in other *nixes):

### system ruby and passenger
#LoadModule passenger_module /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.7/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
#PassengerRoot /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.7
#PassengerRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby

### rvm gemset 1.8.7@rails2.3.11 ruby and passenger
LoadModule passenger_module /Users/matt/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334@rails2.3.11/gems/passenger-3.0.7/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /Users/matt/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334@rails2.3.11/gems/passenger-3.0.7
PassengerRuby /Users/matt/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-1.8.7-p334@rails2.3.11/ruby

I can comment/uncomment the appropriate one and restart apache with the different version of ruby. This also works for ruby 1.9.2 and ruby enterprise edition too.