Is SwitchPipe the Solution for Rails Shared Hosting?

Feb 2, 2008 Ruby Rails

Peter Cooper (who I interviewed recently ) has just announced SwitchPipe, which aims to make deploying and hosting Rails (and other frameworks, such as Django) applications easy. From the site:

Introduction / Overview\ SwitchPipe is a proof of concept "Web application server" developed in Ruby. More accurately, it's a Web application process manager and request dispatcher / proxy. Backend HTTP-speaking applications (Web applications) do not run directly within SwitchPipe, but are loaded into their own processes making SwitchPipe language and framework agnostic.\ SwitchPipe takes control of, and manages, the backend application processes, including loading and proxying to multiple instances of each application in a round-robin style configuration. As an administrator, you can define the maximum number of backend processes to run for each app, along with other settings so that you do not exceeded preferred resource limits. SwitchPipe quickly removes processes that "break" or otherwise outlive their welcome. For example, you can let SwitchPipe kill any backend processes that have not been accessed for, say, 20 seconds. This makes hosting many multiple Rails applications, for example, a quick and non-memory demanding process, ideal for shared hosting environments.\ ...\ SwitchPipe's goal is to be:
* super easy to configure
* the easiest way to deploy multiple HTTP-talking backend applications
* painless in terms of management; no hand-holding of different applications is needed
* a permanent daemon that can handle configuration changes in backend apps “on the fly”
* a reliable solution on Linux and OS/X (and anything POSIX compatible, ideally)

I haven't spent much time with SwitchPipe yet, but if it lives up to Peter's claims this will dramatically simplify hosting Rails/Django/Camping/whatever applications.\ What's interesting to note is that this originated with Peter's [widely read article](http://www.rubyinside.com/no-true-mod_ruby-is-damaging-rubys-viability-on-the-web-693.html) on why such a thing was needed. Unlike a lot of other people who have complained loudly about the state of Rails on shared hosting environments, Peter put his time and talents towards creating a solution which he then released within 3 weeks. This is definitely something we need more of.\ So what are your thoughts? Is this the solution we've been waiting for?