André.Arko.net

16 Aug 2010

Using PassengerPane with GEM_HOME set

I use the excellent homebrew to manage my unix software on OS X, and as a result my bash profile includes export GEM_HOME /usr/local/Cellar/Gems/1.8. Unfortunately, that makes Passenger unable to find any of my gems, which is a bummer.

However, it turns out the fix is just a one-line change to the .vhost files that PassengerPane creates in /etc/apache2/passenger_pane_vhosts. Just add the line starting with SetEnv below, and restart Apache.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName app.dev
  DocumentRoot "/Users/andre/Sites/app/public"
  RackEnv development
  SetEnv GEM_HOME /usr/local/Cellar/Gems/1.8
  <Directory "/Users/andre/Sites/app/public">
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

(I use .dev as my development TLD so that my applications don’t conflict with Bonjour domains on .local.)

There. Now (hopefully) I will remember this post next time, and not print-debug Passenger’s environment again.