Port a Rails App from Windows to Mac or Linux

Question

Hello I've been a Rails developer on Windows for quite some time now, but I recently completed my biggest project yet (it's quite extensive, took me over a year to build) but I am having trouble deploying it. The combination of it's size, complexity and a windows environment is making it needlessly complex to deploy. I am thinking about getting an old mac mini and using it just for rails development.

Either that or install unix on another box.

Is there any way I can port my app to this mac or linux machine, without having to start over? I can't find any resources on the internets about this.

Answer 1

Unless you have very specific system calls in your app there shouldn't be any need to "port" anything as it should work as is on Linux or OS X. Out of curiosity, what kind of problems are you running into with deployment?

Answer 2

Rails is designed to be fairly platform flexible. What gems are you using in your application that won't run on linux / OS X? Usually compatibility issues run the other way (as very few Rails professional developers run Windows). It is hard to debug when you don't include any of the errors you get, etc.