Using hypnotoad in production, anyone?

So, you're using hypnotoad in production. And it works perfectly for you. Maybe you have an Nginx or Apache in front of it configured as reverse proxy. Everything's great. Right? Right. Then I have a zillion questions for you.

Maybe I don't understand how it works, but I'm having the following problems:

• "sometimes" hypnotoad won't stop. I usually try to stop it with:

  hypnotoad --stop /path/to/my/script

• I use symlinks to deploy applications, so for example I deploy in /opt/myapp and each new deployment gets a timestamped folder, /opt/myapp/releases/20120224-180801.

  Then there's a symlink that always points to the last deployed version, /opt/myapp/current → /opt/myapp/releases/{whatever-datetime}. Now, using hypnotoad --stop /opt/myapp/current doesn't work, because hypnotoad probably uses the actual filename, not the symlink, to identify the running application.

  That's fine, but then how can I stop it reliably? I wish it had a hypnotoad --force-stop mode or something.

• Last problem, when I push a new deployment, and stop and restart hypnotoad, often the application doesn't work properly, it only generates exceptions for unknown reasons. Stopping and restarting again manually usually fixes the problems…

I was a bit frustrated today, so I decided to switch back to starman. I have never ever had a problem with it, so I will stick to it for now. But I would still be interested to know whether you use hypnotoad in production and how well it works. Write in the small box below, you don't need to register. Thanks :)