khaines / enigo.com wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Hans Fugal wrote:
> 
>> So I envision a .bat file (.sh on linux/osx) that fires up a local 
>> webserver (mongrel or webrick) and serves up a camping or rails app 
>> off the CD, accessing the data in SQLite, or perhaps just reading it 
>> in from a YAML or XML file (the data set is not huge).
> 
> Sure.  This works just fine.
> 
> I've done this for a couple customers, setting up copies of their 
> applications and sites to run off a CD, so that they could go to trade 
> shows and demonstrate their stuff without needing an internet connection.
> 
> 

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."