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Agvorth
Asked: 2009-07-09 11:08:16 +0800 CST

What dir should I deploy Rails apps into?

  • 772

What would be a reasonable and logical directory into which to deploy my production Rails apps on a Linux system?

Some candidates...

/var/rails  <= There's a /var/www so this would be consistent with that 
               pattern. But I.T. guys have complained about stuff in /var 
               before.

/home/my_home_dir/rails  <= OK, not /var, but I'm not the only developer. 
                            Seems like it really ought to be a systemwide
                            location.

/home/rails  <= I don't know. That just seems weird.

/rails  <= Seems even weirder.

What is the least astonishing, most normal thing to do here?

(Background info -- a Rails app is a bunch of server side code written in Ruby along with a public dir containing JavaScript, CSS, and maybe a little HTML. The public dir is mapped to an Apache vhost. Apache handles the Ruby code through a module called Passenger or mod_rails.)

Thanks for the help, all. I think I'm going to go with /opt/deployed_rails_apps. (I like long, expository directory names, and tab completion.) /var/... is also a good place, but I've gotten stern grumbling from I.T. when I tried to deploy stuff there. If it were my own machine I might go with /var or /srv.

linux redhat deployment apache-2.2 ruby-on-rails

6 Answers

  1. You may want to follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) and place it in

    /srv : Data for services provided by this system

    EDIT:

    I wouldn't place it in /opt:

    /opt : Add-on application software packages

    It's purpose says:

    /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages.

    A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a separate /opt/ or /opt/ directory tree, where is a name that describes the software package and is the provider's LANANA registered name.

    I don't think a developed application is a 'software package'.

    The rationale for /srv is

    This main purpose of specifying this is so that users may find the location of the data files for particular service, and so that services which require a single tree for readonly data, writable data and scripts (such as cgi scripts) can be reasonably placed.

    I understand that a rails app is a cgi script and should be placed in /srv.

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  2. On CentOS Linux distributions (and subsequently RedHat), when you install the httpd package (for Apache 2), it creates /var/www, and expects that your vhosts point to your web content here. The default vhost is typically dumped in /var/www/htdocs, and subsequent sites/apps should be put in /var/www/sitename.

    The actual location shouldn't matter much, but it's common to see /opt/www/sitename, /var/www/sitename, or simply /opt/www or /var/www.

    You've already stated a few of the reasons why some of the other locations (like /home) are not really suited for this.

    Personally, I prefer /var/www/sitename since it's friendly to Apache and Rails, and is system-wide.

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  3. Best Answer

    I think /opt would be the place for an application like this. I agree with following the FHS as suggested by chmeee, but I don't agree that a Rails app is a service per se.

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  4. In debian/ubuntu based system such applications are usually installed in /usr/share folder (i.e. /usr/share/ruby), since they are non-compiled files (which would go into /usr/lib). Since your application is not a standard application you would probably put it in /usr/local/share preventing it there being overwritten by any system updates.

    /opt is certainly also a possibility here.

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  5. I usually put them in /opt/app_name.

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  6. I keep my deploys in

    /home/www.example.com/application

    The arguments:

    Home will contain all the moving parts of a single website. If I have more websites I will know where to find them.

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