Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu
I feel I just have to try Ruby on Rails, I mean everybody else is doing it and I don’t want to feel left out.
So I started setting it up on my X40 which runs Ubuntu. There is still no deb available for it, you have to use the Ruby Gems system to set it up. I dont know if this is good or bad - it seems like a Ruby CPAN and my feelings towards Perls CPAN are mixed. I once ended up with two Perls on a Red Hat box when using it to set up Request Tracker. Let’s hope Gems works better.
To start out I had to apt-get rdoc and libzlib-ruby. After that it is installed. Whohoo. What now?
Ok rails ~/work/rortest … Bang. Some dependency is missing. Let’s search Synaptic to see what could possibly make it tick.
libwebrick maybe? Nope.
libmysql-ruby? Nope.
eruby? No.
libdbi-mysql. Noo.
libwhatever-ruby. Nothing works.
Maybe there’s some info on their site? Hmm … there are instructions on how to install it on Debian unstable which involves apt-getting the all ruby libraries known to man - but who cares - let’s try that.
Whohoo! It works. Let’s see some of the Ruby love in the browser then - it is indeed there.
Ok. Now for the database tweaking. Why three databases? I guess I’l find out.
Yaml is really, really nice.
Ok, according to the site, all I have left is to develop my Rails application, so I guess that is what I will do. Wish me luck.
Update: There are now instructions for how to set up Rails on Ubuntu.
May 15th, 2005 at 1:49
Ruby Gems is certainly inspired by Perl CPAN, but it also tries to fix most of the the problems of CPAN. For example, you can have multiple versions of the same Gem installed and libraries or applications that uses it can specify which version requirements they have.
The three databases are for the recommended way of doing development and deployment in Rails. One is for running the app while your developing, the second is for running your tests (this will reload the database with each test run), the third is for production. These “modes” are called environments in Rails and you are certainly not limited to three. This is one of the great things about Rails, it’s not just a framework it also encourages you to develop with “best practices”. The productivity gains we’re seeing is partly the framework itself, but a lot of it comes from these “best practices”.
Suggestion: try to install and get the excellent typo blogging engine running. It’s a great way of getting an introduction and doing something sensible at the same time.
May 15th, 2005 at 20:15
I have spent almost a good half hour with Rails and it looks pretty slick. I will most certainly look into the blogging thing.
From your wording it sounds like you are using it in real world applications - is that correctly understood?
May 19th, 2005 at 5:49
No, not yet unfortunately…