Hi Mats,

On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 01:14:11PM +0100, Mats Persson wrote:
> 
> Please Note!  I am not trying to have a bitching session here, just  
> hoping to point out some very important points to those that have  
> seemingly missed them.
> 
> As a newbie and a converted member of the RoR 'club', and further  
> considering that DHH and many other users are OS X users, I find the  
> following really really hard to digest/accept:
> 
> The Installl experience of RubyOnRails, FCGI, Lighttpd and so on, is  
> really really poor. Amazingly poor.

well, it isn't a one-click install. more exactly, it requires you no
clicks at all - just a commandline and a text editor   

To make a long story short - I don't think setting up a production
quality server can or should be done in a one-click-install manner.

Imho someone administering a production server system should at least
have *some* knowledge of what's going on - and one learns that best when
setting things up by himself. That way you know where to look when
things break. 

[ skipped some paragraphs ]

> I know that non-programmers - designers, clients, etc. etc. - take  
> one look at the steps they have to go through to get the stuff  
> installed, and turn their backs to it.

I really don't get your point here. Why the heck should designers or
clients want to set up a rails 'production quality' server ?  

> So what I am kindly asking is that someone, or preferably the RoR  
> core group, sit down and produce 'one-click-installers' that mimics  
> the available installations on TextDrive, Dreamhost, etc. etc.

Personally I would appreciate if they continued to do rails development,
not to produce fancy installers. 

main difference between Open Source and commercial products: OS
sometimes sucks at installation time but works once installed -
commercial software has nice installers and fancy GUIs with bells and
whistles - but sucks once installed. 

> In other words, a basic installer that installs the required Ruby,  
> RoR, gems, FCGI, Lighttpd, common gem stuff (generators, etc etc) in  
> a single convenient package that is easily updated by using a later  
> version installer.  The installer, or some installed CLI script, then  
> allows you to easily generate vhosts and working apps from there.
> 
> I would be quite happy to pay US$ 10-20 for such a working installer  
> that was updated as things changed, and I am sure I'm NOT alone in  
> wanting that, so if someone took the time to do this, I'm sure they  
> could even earn some money from it.

well, if there really is this demand, the market will fill the
gap soon.

> Locomotive looked promising, but let me down by it's simplicity. I  
> want and NEED to be able to define virtualhosts that access the  
> various RoR apps, rather than "localhost:<PortNum>" stuff.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/vhosts/
so what's the problem ? 

I think if you came up with a concrete question about a problem you have
in getting your setup done, you really would get help. At no cost, in
most cases. Just sit down, think and describe your problem, instead of
crying for an automated fool-proof installer.

And if you really can't get this working on your own - why don't you do
the business with a professional rails hoster or employ a sysadmin
yourself ?

Hope I didn't sound too harsh, but I simply think it's weird to say 'one
click installer' and 'server' in one sentence.

greetings,

Jens

-- 
Jens Krämer
jk@...