Rails - Sep 2006 - Suggested Rails Architectures (OS/Webserver/Other Languages)

I would like to preface my question by point out that I am not a 
programmer by trade and that my experience is limited to things I have 
learned over the years in the development of my full auction, forum and 
accounting engines. (I run a niche auction site that is about a decade 
old and has about 50,000 members -- all on software I wrote from 
scratch).

For five years now, I have been running entirely on Perl and Postgresql 
on Apache 1.3, on Debian. My entire site infrastructure is probably 
closing in on 20,000 lines of perl code and it has been unweildly for a 
couple of years. I have slowly worked on re-writing everything in a more 
logical and thorough manner, but every time I get a significant portion 
of the project completed, I realize what a mess it is still going to be. 
Frankly, as everyone knows - perl is a great tool to shoot yourself in 
the foot. Especially if it''s the first and only language you really
know
very well. And that has been my problem.

So, I am finally deciding to step out to something else. I have chosen 
to investigate Ruby, because I think Ruby on Rails will give me the 
flexibility I need to write complex applications and systems without 
spending enormous quantities of my life coding them and maintaining 
them. That gives this one-man-operation the freedom to invest his time 
in other things my site desparately needs my time for.

I have spent several days trying to find answers to some particular 
questions without success, so I appeal to the more experienced members 
of this list to impart some wisdom on me and guide me in the decision 
making process.

As I mentioned, almost everything I do now is in Perl on Apache 1.3 on 
Debian. I also use third-party applications based on PHP and Python.

I believe I will need my web server to allow for PHP, Python, Perl and 
Ruby functionality, since I won''t be running 100% of either of the
four.

And therein lies the problem. I am now unsure of what web server to use 
and whether I should stick with my old friend - Debian.

As far as the OS:

I have been exclusively Debian (currently Etch) for over five years now 
and have not played much with other distros in that time. While I prefer 
staying with Debian, I have read a number of things (including the whole 
fiasco with the Debian packaging team complaining about rubygems and the 
FHS) that lead me to be completely confused on whether to use the strict 
apt-get rails package, rubygems, both, completely hand-installed setup, 
etc. It seems like getting a fully functional deployment that won''t 
break in the near future on Debian is a headache and I''m wondering what
people would suggest here. Are the problems and concerns significant 
enough that I should really think of moving off of Debian?


As far as the Web Server:

I first read in a number of places that Ruby on Rails had performance or 
threading problems on Apache2 that made it a bad choice and that it was 
better to stick with Apache 1.3. On the other hand, every installation 
tutorial I have found only covers installation of Ruby on Rails with 
Apache2. So - which is the preferred web server for Ruby on Rails 
development?!

Additionally, I need to be able to run perl, PHP and perhaps python as I 
mentioned before. I have only ever used Apache 1.3, but my understanding 
regarding perl is that it requires significant to major alterations for 
each piece of perl software to be ported over to Apache2. I don''t want 
to rewrite software - mine or anyone elses.

I''m also a bit stymied by some warnings I seem to have read around the 
net in comments about ruby on rails, as far as performance. How does 
this compare to Perl? Believe it or not, my main site application that I 
wrote does not use mod_perl. So it uses more resources (though I do 
spread the database end out with pg_pool for a little help). However, I 
have no problem serving enough requests to handle dozens and dozens of 
visitors at a time with a database-heavy site.

With Ruby on Rails, is there some sort of a problem with running 
multiple applications and services off the same server? And I know that 
poorly written perl being run under mod_perl can cause session/state 
issues and even "contamination" issues. Is that a risk with Ruby on 
Rails?


I appreciate your time for reading this lengthy request and offering 
your advice. I am really looking forward to getting things underway, but 
my situation doesn''t call for just installing whatever all-in-one
bundle
and being on my merry way. I want to do things right from the start and 
get on to programming and seeing what all the excitement is about.

If you could help direct me toward what kind of environment I should 
look at considering, I would greatly appreciate it.

Regards.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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