Can a Rails 5 application with ActionCable be deployed on Windows? - production-environment

Question

I have a Rails 5 application which I was planning to deploy on Linux, but because we needed some access very specific Windows-only software, I need to deploy it on Windows Server 2012 R2. My software stack (or mix) was supposed to be Nginx/Puma/Rails/PostgreSQL/Redis. Everything installs for me on Windows except Puma, and the Rails documentation says that I need Puma for ActionCable.
How do I get Puma to run on Windows? I have seen and tried snippets of things to try, and I have also seen and tried snippets on what not to do, such as running in daemon mode because fork() is not supported. Does anybody have a repeatable set of instructions on how to get Puma to work on Windows with a Rails application?
Or, if Puma a non-starter for Windows, is there a repeatable alternative for deploying a Rails 5 application with ActionCable to a Windows Server host (e.g. Windows 2012 R2)?

Answer 1

According to the readme file from the github page, following things to keep in mind:
daemon mode is not supported. so comment out/remove the following, if there is such line.
daemonize false
Workers do not work in Windows since it does not support processes. We want the workers to be "0". So comment out following lines:
workers 2 # The default is "0"
preload_app!
server sockets are not seamless on restart, they must be closed and reopened. These platforms have no way to pass descriptors into a new process that is exposed to ruby.
Do not use unix socket, instead bind the server to "tcp://". So comment out any line that looks like following:
bind 'unix:///var/run/puma.sock'
bind 'unix:///var/run/puma.sock?umask=0111'
Instead use following:
bind "tcp://127.0.0.1:4001"
# You don't have to if you don't need to specify a port
# since the default is "tcp://0.0.0.0:9292"
If you see any http parse error (malformed http request) after starting rails server, try this answer. If it doesn't work, then comment out this line from config/environments/production.rb or config/environments/production.rb (depending on which environment you want to run Puma)
config.force_ssl = true
Here is what the puma.rb file might look like:
worker 0 # Not necessary. The default is "0"
threads_count = ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 }.to_i
threads threads_count, threads_count
bind "tcp://127.0.0.1:4001" # Not necessary. Default is "tcp://0.0.0.0:9292"
environment ENV.fetch("RAILS_ENV") { "development" }
plugin :tmp_restart
Finally run bundle exec puma -C config\puma.rb and it should work.