Rails : deploying first app - production mode

Question

I am very confused about this whole rails deploy thing. The confusion is that whilst developing the whole app it has been in development mode, which is fine. Now that I will deploy it, are there ammendments I need to make to files to change the rails app to production mode before deploying, or does deploying autmatically do this?

I guess what I am asking is how do I switch from one environment to another?

Answer 1

No need to change any files just set shell variable RAILS_ENV=production on your server

Answer 2

rails server -e production will put you in production mode.

ALSO...

By default rails 3.1 and later defer assets to the asset pipeline. So you either need to run rake assets:precompile or turn on serving assets in config/environments/production.rb.

# config/environments/production.rb
config.assets.compile = true

You also need to ensure that your production database is setup correctly in config/database.yml

Other than that you are good to go :)

If this is truly a production box you could also set an environment variable to 'production' as well. As explained by Anatoliy Kukul in another answer.