Setting up your MacBook for ROR

Rails
1

I am getting my new MacBook today and was wondering if the experts on
this list might have some tips and pointers about what they do to set up
their Macs as a RubyonRails dev machine?

I come from a windows background and some of this is essential there.
But in the case of Macs do you recommend,

  • installing the OS from scratch
  • adding/removing any default applications from the install
  • any other system/OS level tuning

I do intend to use the Hivelogic/Geoffrey Grosenbach’s tips to get the
Ruby, Rails, MySQL, Mongrel setup done. Suggestions/comments welcome.

Thanks.

Chet

2

I found this page in the apple developer site to be pretty helpful:

http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html

It might be a little dated but i’ve used it to set up rails before with
postgres

3

I compiled it from scratch, it is not incredibly difficult if you follow
the following guidelines :

Otherwise there is always Locomotiv, haven’t used it for more info :
http://locomotive.raaum.org/

The last one is maybe a little more Mac Way, but in the Agile book they
recommend the first one…

4

On 22 Jan 2007, at 17:09, Ja Bo wrote:

they
recommend the first one…

I would recommend http://nubyonrails.com/articles/2005/12/29/an-even-
better-way-to-build-ruby-rails-lighttpd-and-mysql-on-tiger

This one uses Mongrel instead of Lighttpd and it’s all packed in a
nice shell script. I also used the hivelogic setup, but mongrel seems
to be the preferred way of running rails apps nowadays.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

5

I have tried multiple ways of installing RoR on my macbook.
Finally I went with: http://locomotive.raaum.org

Hassle-free, and works perfectly for me.

Some extra programs I use are:
TextMate for coding and VirtueDesktops for switching between code and
browser.

Good luck.

6

Macs don’t really come with a lot of extra crap like a Dell does. The
pre-installed OS should be fine.

For an editor, I’ve been using TextMate (http://macromates.com/). I
must
have got a discount, because I don’t remember ever paying ~$50 for it,
but
it’s a great editor for any task.

I haven’t run RadRails (http://radrails.org/) on Mac OS X, but it also
is a
great environment to work in.

Stephen G.

7

Thanks for the superfast responses, folks. Very helpful.

I was curious to hear if you recommend any additional steps before I
begin the Ruby/Rails/MySQL/Mongrel install. i.e. reinstall the OS from
scratch, add/remove any utils etc.

There might be a simple No answer to this, but coming from a windows
background, wanted to check if these steps are needed in the Mac world
specifically for a ROR dev machine.

Thanks.

8

On 22 Jan 2007, at 17:22, Chet wrote:

Thanks for the superfast responses, folks. Very helpful.

I was curious to hear if you recommend any additional steps before I
begin the Ruby/Rails/MySQL/Mongrel install. i.e. reinstall the OS from
scratch, add/remove any utils etc.

There might be a simple No answer to this, but coming from a windows
background, wanted to check if these steps are needed in the Mac world
specifically for a ROR dev machine.

Then let me be the first to simply say: “No” :slight_smile: A Mac doesn’t come
with a heap of crap applications like some PC suppliers (ahum Dell
ahum). Should you get into disk space problems, you could remove
GarageBand (and it’s related files in Library > Application Support)
if you don’t use it, but with hard drives nowadays, that probably
won’t be necessary in the first few months :-). You can also skip a
virus scanner and spyware/adware remover, so for the first time in
your life, your portable won’t lose 10% of its processing power just
to keep your mind at ease.

I can recommend you some of my Mac favorites:
• TextMate (the must have Rails editor if you are on a Mac)
• QuickSilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/)
• iTerm (Terminal with some extra nifty features)
• Transmit ((S)FTP)
• Vienna (RSS reader)
• Adium (Instant Messaging)

If you want to find these apps, check out http://www.versiontracker.com/

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

9

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:02:31PM +0100, Chet wrote:

I do intend to use the Hivelogic/Geoffrey Grosenbach’s tips to get the
Ruby, Rails, MySQL, Mongrel setup done. Suggestions/comments welcome.

I happen to like X11 as an environment for development (editors and
shells,
primarily, with various OS X apps for other things) so I installed X11
from
the install DVD. You’ll also need the developer tools (XCode) from the
install DVD so that RubyGems will be able to compile extensions.

I used Fink to install most everything (Ruby executables, my editor, and
various convenient libraries, such as ImageMagick) RubyGems, then
installed
RubyGems by hand. From there it was a gem install.

Thanks.
Chet
–Greg

10

Chet wrote:

I do intend to use the Hivelogic/Geoffrey Grosenbach’s tips to get the
Ruby, Rails, MySQL, Mongrel setup done. Suggestions/comments welcome.

Thanks.

Chet

This is how we setup our laptops at PLANET ARGON… just we use
PostgreSQL not MySQL… but the rest should be helpful to you.

Good luck!

Cheers,

Robby

–
Robby R.
http://www.robbyonrails.com/

11

I personally like the MacPorts/DarwinPorts way of doing things:
sudo port install ruby rb-rubygems
sudo gem install -y rails

Easy! :slight_smile:

12

I do intend to use the Hivelogic/Geoffrey Grosenbach’s tips to get the
Ruby, Rails, MySQL, Mongrel setup done. Suggestions/comments welcome.

This is an updated “version” of Hivelogic’s instructions, but uses
Mongrel
instead of Lighttpd, adds in rmagick and memcache, etc…

It’s 99% copy paste too which is nice :slight_smile:

http://blog.pjkh.com/2007/1/15/building-rails-and-all-its-friends-on-osx

13

Tom De grunt wrote:

I personally like the MacPorts/DarwinPorts way of doing things:

I’d second this method, I also jotted down a quick reference for how I
setup my MacBook Pro for Rails coding.

http://www.slashdotdash.net/articles/2006/11/10/apple-macbook-pro-setup-for-a-rails-coder

Ben