From: khaines@...
Date: 2007-08-09T23:35:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby app on a CD

> Have you run into any issues with rails on a cd (which is read-only)? 
> Obviously you couldn't make changes to the database, but will it work fine in 
> other respects for a read-only application?
>
> Ed, Instant Rails has good potential for this project. though Apache and 
> MySQL is a bit heavyweight for what's needed. It would have to be transparent 
> to the user, though. Do you know if it can be driven completely from a 
> script? i.e. it says "Instant Rails will detect that it is being started from 
> a new directory and ask if you want to have it update the paths in the all of 
> the configuration files... Just say yes."

In my case, I was not using Rails.

I didn't use Apache, either.  I kept it simple in that regard and just 
used webrick.  For something like this, webrick is more than fast enough, 
and that eliminated a whole class of dependencies and configuration.

they also did install the db on their hard drive, because they wanted to 
be able to have the full functionality to edit things.  MySQL has a 
zipfile version that was ideal for this, though.  I just gave them a very 
simple installation file that they unzipped, and the .bat that started 
everything up took care of launching all of the pieces for them.


Kirk Haines