I have started using Pow lately, which I have avoided for a long time, without any explicit reasoning. Now that I have actually tried it, I can definitely say that using Pow is really a breeze, and is really powerful at the same time. Before this, I used to run Phusion Passenger for my needs, and while that was a lot more powerful, it was a lot more fuss for my naive needs.

Now, Pow is really great for Rack based applications, but does not work well enough with other applications, e.g. the ones using PHP. What makes it worse is that the default Pow configuration takes over the port 80, and thereby, my Apache server will never be hit. Great.

I, quickly, googled some stuff and found a way to make Apache and Pow play nicely with each other, and at the same time remove the need for dnsmasq, which I am, currently, using to resolve arbitrary top-level domains. This post contains my notes on this topic.

Uninstall Pow

The first step we need to perform is to uninstall Pow, if it is already installed. That way, we make sure that nothing interferes with our setup.

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curl get.pow.cx/uninstall.sh | sh

Add Configuration for Pow

We will tell Pow to use the port 3100, instead of taking over port 80, and let the poor Apache be. Furthermore, I will tell Pow to resolve a number of TLDs to 127.0.0.1.

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echo 'export POW_DST_PORT=88' >> ~/.powconfig
echo 'export POW_DOMAINS=dev,pow,lab,test' >> ~/.powconfig

From the above list of TLDs, we want dev, and pow to serve applications using Pow, while lab and test will be serving Apache based applications using VirtualHost directives.

Adding Apache VirtualHosts

First, we will tell Apache to pass any requests for dev, and pow TLDs to Pow using reverse proxy:

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<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName pow
    ServerAlias *.dev *.pow *.xip.io

    ProxyPass / http://localhost:20559/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:20559/
    ProxyPreserveHost On
</VirtualHost>

Having done that, we tell Apache to serve up the remaining TLDs from a particular directory:

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<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName lab
    ServerAlias *.lab *.test
    VirtualDocumentRoot "/Users/nikhgupta/Code/legacy-apps/%1"
</VirtualHost>

Now, make sure that the above directives are being served up by Apache by including them in your httpd.conf somewhere, somehow.

Restart Apache

Apache will use the above VirtualHost directives upon restart/reload:

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sudo apachectl restart

Install Pow

All that remains is to install Pow:

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curl get.pow.cx | sh

Install Powder

Oh, yes, this is my favorite. Simply, install Powder to further simplify your life.

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gem install powder

Ecstatic :)

Results?

For starters, I can serve up any rack based application by simply running powder list in that directory, and then access it using appname.dev or appname.pow. And, this also works for static websites as well e.g. Jekyll (note that, this requires that the current directory has a public sub directory which contains an index.html file.)

Moreover, my old Apache configurations run without any implications. And, therefore, I can keep on working on applications that are served using PHP.

Effectively, I can run a ruby/rails based application in a single step by running powder link, and a php application in zero steps by simply placing it at the correct location.