I have two rails apps running off the same database, one which runs the client and one which provides an admin interface.
Both the apps have the exact same models de
Yes, symlink the models directory, but then add an environment variable to your environment.rb for each instance. Then your models can know which instance is using it and include additional validations or what not.
in environment.rb:
APP_INSTANCE = "app1"
in model.rb
validates_length_of :name, :within => 3..100, :if => :is_app_one?
def is_app_one?
APP_INSTANCE == "app1"
end