Some rails application, especially in SaSS category will behave differently based on the different subdomain. In that case, pow is necessary, as it makes simulate subdomain much easier compare with edit based on /etc/hosts.

Setup the pow relative easy:

brew install pow
mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Pow/Hosts
ln -s ~/Library/Application\ Support/Pow/Hosts ~/.pow
pow --install-local
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/cx.pow.powd.plist

Then you can link required rails application via:

cd ~/.pow
ln -s /Users/guochunzhong/git/product_hunt/ product-hunt

And finally, using http://product-hunt.dev to access rails application without using rails s.

Because now there is no terminal to running rails s, so you now have to use tail -f log/development.log to monitor, it’s not a big deal, in fact, more flexible as it enables you Ctrl+C any time and leaves the interesting log in the terminal to read.

The big issue is now you are no access the Byebug as even Byebug is paused, we have no access to it, so must using remote mode of byebug.

Luckily, it’s still not too hard, just following product_hunt commit will do the job.