Mongrel users - Sep 2006 - Running multiple domains on one codebase, mongrel a good choice?

We''re working on rails application for a client that needs to be  
deployed under a variety of domain names and needs the ability to  
load custom configurations for the database, parts of the docroot,  
caching, etc. based on the site we''re serving.  We use mongrel to  
host some other single domain apps and would like to do so here too.  
We''d like to not have to deploy the codebase multiple times either  
(since it''s identical) so we''re trying to figure out a way
maybe to
load each instance into mongrel with different params and then let  
the instance configure itself.

Does anyone have experience using mongrel in this way or similar?

Thanks,
John

On 9/6/06, John Clayton <john at fivesquaresoftware.com>
wrote:
> We''re working on rails application for a client that needs to be
> deployed under a variety of domain names and needs the ability to
> load custom configurations for the database, parts of the docroot,
> caching, etc. based on the site we''re serving.  We use mongrel to
> host some other single domain apps and would like to do so here too.
> We''d like to not have to deploy the codebase multiple times either
> (since it''s identical) so we''re trying to figure out a
way maybe to
> load each instance into mongrel with different params and then let
> the instance configure itself.
If your application is equal (or at least, only database and public/
configuration differ) you should check Fossilize plugin.

Its too "crude", but John W. Long (Radiant CMS) implemented it in a
better way to suit "instancing" based on gems or folders where you
store the main code base and redirect to instances.
>
> Does anyone have experience using mongrel in this way or similar?
Also, mongrel works good under this scenario. You should check the
sample code and the docs about creating daemons for mongrel_cluster
that load your specific root path.
>
> Thanks,
> John
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

-- 
Luis Lavena
Multimedia systems
-
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that
is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi

John Clayton wrote:
> We''re working on rails application for a client that needs to be  
> deployed under a variety of domain names and needs the ability to  
> load custom configurations for the database, parts of the docroot,  
> caching, etc. based on the site we''re serving.  We use mongrel to
> host some other single domain apps and would like to do so here too.  
> We''d like to not have to deploy the codebase multiple times either
> (since it''s identical) so we''re trying to figure out a
way maybe to
> load each instance into mongrel with different params and then let  
> the instance configure itself.
> 
> Does anyone have experience using mongrel in this way or similar?
I''m using different custum environments for different sites. Zed gave
me
that idea. I also have a mongrel_cluster.conf for each site that will 
load the correct environment.

Then in my Apache vhost config I link the right site to the mongrel 
instances.

I override a small method in rails to load assests from an site specific 
location instead of just public/

HTH,

Jeroen