I have a thinking-sphinx app and oddly enough the files in /db/sphinx/development/ have not been initialized.
I have a separate app where they HAVE been, but I am not sure why. I don't recall doing anything different.
Does anyone know how to create these files or if they are app specific?
The directory db/sphinx/development usually contains the sphinx index on your development machine, if you have built it. You can do this in ThinkingSphinx by creating your configuration file with rake ts:conf, afterwards you can generate the Sphinx index with rake ts:index. Sphinx need to be installed correctly on your machine, of course.