suggestions for using Rack-based Ruby apps on Windows?

[Nick Brown]

At my office, we have a Windows/IIS server hosting some CGI-based Ruby
web apps. Because the server is Windows-based, we can easily use the AD
domain to control authentication to the various web apps.

But over in unix-land, I've been working with Rack frameworks (such as
Sinatra) with great success! Rack is just far superior to plain-old-CGI.
Unfortunately, Phusion Passenger (my Rack server) does not and never
will support Windows.

So I ask you: are there any mature, stable solutions for Racking up on
Windows? Is anyone using IronRuby.Rack on IIS in production? If IIS and
Apache aren't options, is it possible to use another Rackable webserver
on Windows and still use domain authentication to the apps it hosts?

Alternatively, what is the best solution for authenticating to Windows
domains from unix Rack servers? We have found that Apache+Samba does not
play well with our domain, but we could potentially move the domain
stuff to the webapp-level if that is indeed the best option.

Thoughts? I am interested in hearing about any real-world experience on
this topic.

Thanks!

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

Alternatively, what is the best solution for authenticating to Windows
domains from unix Rack servers? We have found that Apache+Samba does not
play well with our domain, but we could potentially move the domain
stuff to the webapp-level if that is indeed the best option.

Thoughts? I am interested in hearing about any real-world experience on
this topic.

http://code.google.com/p/rubycas-server/ (and rubycas-client, which
allows Ruby apps to use the CAS protocol) can authenticate against AD,
with an ActiveDirectory connector.

It's quite simple to use (at least, it looks that way), and can be
extended, if need be.

I do not know if it is rack-able, but it can run on Windows as a pure
Ruby app (you'd've to proxy connections through via ISS, in the worst case).