Passenger (mod rails for Apache) launches
weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/4/11/passenger-mod_rails-for-apache-launches
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
The guys at Phusion has finally wrapped up Passenger, their mod_rails-like module for Apache. Its looking like a great, easy solution for people who want a more PHP-like deployment story. Just dump your files in a directory setup with a vhost and off you go. Touch tmp/restart.txt and the application is restarted. Doesnt get much simpler than that.