Rails Setup

I'd start with something like

https://github.com/joshfng/railsready

You might need to modify those scripts to suit your needs, but it will at least get you started with ruby 1.9.2, rails, bundler, passenger, git, and some other stuff you will likely need.

If you're happy with nginx, I'd suggest using phusion passenger along with Ruby Enterprise Edition (an optimized version of 1.8.7, and despite the name, it's free)

http://www.modrails.com/install.html

http://www.rubyenterpriseedition.com/

If you use REE then you can keep it separate from your distribution's version.

Also look at Capistrano for deployment, which make sure you do it the same way all the time and gives an easy rollback.

Sean

I will definitely check out Ruby Enterprise Edition on my dev box this weekend. This is very helpful. I hear a lot about Capistrano as well. So I will check this out to.

Thanks for the info!

I'm in the process of setting up a Debian and nginx box at the moment intended solely for Ruby on Rails applications. I've done a few steps, but now have a query as I'm very new to the Ruby/RoR ecosystem.

So far I have:

Put dotdeb in my sources.list and installed nginx-extras which includes Passenger. nginx is 1.0.6 and Passenger is 3.0.8.

Installed RVM as root, and set Ruby 1.9.2 to be the default.

In most/all tutorials I've found, one is instructed to install Passenger via the Gem. Is there any advantage to having Passenger installed via dotdeb's package, or should I be installing Passenger via a gem as I have Ruby installed via RVM?

If I stick to the dotdeb package version of Passenger, I think I need to read up on configuring it next… any pointers on that appreciated.

Wish I could help but I decided to go with Tornado rather than Rails for this particular site. Found it better for my needs.