Deploying Sinatra app on Dreamhost/Passenger with custom gems

Question

I've got a Sinatra app that I'm trying to run on Dreamhost that makes use of pony to send email. In order to get the application up and running at the very beginning (before adding pony), I had to gem unpack rack and gem unpack sinatra into the vendor/ directory, so this was my config.ru:

require 'vendor/rack/lib/rack'
require 'vendor/sinatra/lib/sinatra'

set :run, false
set :environment, :production
set :views, "views"

require 'public/myapp.rb'
run Sinatra::Application

I have already done gem install pony and gem unpack pony (into vendor/). Afterwards, I tried adding require 'vendor/sinatra/lib/pony' to config.ru only to have Passenger complain about pony's dependencies (mime-types, tmail) not being found either!

There has to be a better way to use other gems and tone down those long, ugly, redundant requires. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

I'd recommend creating your own gem path "somewhere" then adding it in your config.ru like ENV['GEM_PATH'] = xxx Gem.clear_paths

then install your gems into that

Answer 2

Hi,

My config.ru is just simple as:

require 'rubygems'
require 'vendor/sinatra/lib/sinatra.rb'
require 'app.rb'

and app.rb head:

require 'yaml'
require 'haml'
require 'ostruct'
require 'date'
require 'pp'

module FlytoFB log = File.new("sinatra.log", "a") STDOUT.reopen(log) STDERR.reopen(log)

    configure do

            enable :logging, :dump_errors
            set :app_file, __FILE__
            set :reload, true
            set :root, File.dirname(__FILE__)
            set :environment, :production
            set :env, :production
            set :run, false

            set :raise_errors, true
      set :public, 'public'

            error do
                    e = request.env['sinatra.error']
                    puts e.to_s
                    puts e.backtrace.join("\n")
                    "Application Error!"
            end

            not_found do
              "Page not found!"
      end

good luck

Francisco

Answer 3

It took me ages to find that you can simply use "gem install sinatra" and gem will figure out (because the system directories are read-only) that you will need to use a local gem install directory. As of now, there seems to be no need to set any special environment at all. It figures out to use $HOME/.gem as the local gem path and everything just works. No need for require 'vendor/stuff' at all. I did find I had to add $HOME/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin to my path in order to execute binaries installed by gems.

Here's my config.ru (for Dreamhost)

## Passenger should set RACK_ENV for Sinatra
require 'test'
set :environment, :development
run Sinatra::Application

Later edit: This is all well and fine, but there remains the issue that Passenger can't find my gems when the job initially starts up.

Answer 4

Install Ruby gems on dreamhost

http://www.blog.bridgeutopiaweb.com/post/installing-ruby-gems-on-dreamhost/

Change config.ru (works for Sinatra 1.0)

require 'rubygems'

require 'vendor/sinatra/lib/sinatra.rb'

ENV['GEM_HOME'] = '/home/username/.gems'
ENV['GEM_PATH'] = '$GEM_HOME:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8'
require 'rubygems'
Gem.clear_paths

disable :run, :reload

set :environment, :production

require 'yourapp'
run Sinatra::Application

Hope it helps someone.

I am using pony and a lot of other gems for my Sinatra. It should work well for you too. It's just those two lines (GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH) you have to add on your config.