Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

railsinstaller.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#21

Post by notahacker »

The biggest hurdle with Rails on Windows is that when things go wrong (and often in subtly different ways with different solutions to when things go wrong on OSX and Unix), the quality of help just isn't the same. Overcoming that is a harder barrier than the initial installation, which this certainly seems to significantly improve.

The most useful Windows installer I found for RoR (and I'm far from a Windows detractor) was this one: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/windows-installer

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#23

Post by migmartri »

drnicwilliams wrote: post #12
migmartri wrote: post #10

What are the differences between RailsInstaller and RubyStack ? http://bitnami.org/stack/rubystack

RubyStack is great - it installs lots of things you need for running Rails in production on Windows, I think. Like Apache and MySQL server, etc. The 20-panel wizard is sort of off-putting, if you really want to be fussy. I don't think RubyStack includes Git when I last looked. The focus for RailsInstaller is a welcome kit for new developers. Can we give them everything they need for the first 30 days until they fall…

I thought that rubystack was focused to give the users everything they need to start working with rails avoiding environment setup as well.

Sorry but I am trying to see the difference but I am not sure if I can.

So then the difference is some kind of friendly/more advanced installation interface and an easy way to get started installing less "stuff" than rubystack does?

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#25

Post by drnicwilliams »

notahacker wrote: post #21

The biggest hurdle with Rails on Windows is that when things go wrong (and often in subtly different ways with different solutions to when things go wrong on OSX and Unix), the quality of help just isn't the same. Overcoming that is a harder barrier than the initial installation, which this certainly seems to significantly improve. The most useful Windows installer I found for RoR (and I'm far from a Windows detracto…

Another "side-by-side" route is via virtualization. I like http://vagrantup.com/ a lot for this. It allows you to share folders between the host + the guest OS. I'm interested in this route. Engine Yard is sponsoring Mitchell & his virtualization work to help it get more traction as part of a standard development toolset.

Either way, these are more convoluted "getting started" or "test drive" solutions. A 50Mb one-click installer that "just works" will hopefully help new Rails developers fall in love with Rails first and foremostly.

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#26

Post by getsat »

notsosmart wrote: post #9

I'm just learning ROR from an online tutorial ( http://railstutorial.org/ ), and I wish I had this last week. For newbies like myself, I think installing the framework is sometimes such a big hurdle, it pushes one to give up early. Which is unfortunate, because I read the real challenges happen a few weeks in. I had a weird issue where I had to reinstall xcode from the OS X DVD. Took a bit of Googling to figure that…

If you're on a mac, you already have rails and ruby 1.8.6 (osx 10.5) or 1.8.7 (osx 10.6).

Just sudo gem update to get the latest version and you're good to go.

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#27

Post by drnicwilliams »

getsat wrote: post #26
notsosmart wrote: post #9

I'm just learning ROR from an online tutorial ( http://railstutorial.org/ ), and I wish I had this last week. For newbies like myself, I think installing the framework is sometimes such a big hurdle, it pushes one to give up early. Which is unfortunate, because I read the real challenges happen a few weeks in. I had a weird issue where I had to reinstall xcode from the OS X DVD. Took a bit of Googling to figure that…

If you're on a mac, you already have rails and ruby 1.8.6 (osx 10.5) or 1.8.7 (osx 10.6). Just sudo gem update to get the latest version and you're good to go.

ruby 1.8.7 is required for Rails 3; so Leopard/10.5 users need to install ruby 1.8.7 manually to get started as if they didn't have ruby installed at all, I think.

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#28

Post by petercooper »

cosgroveb wrote: post #24

If you want to get up and running on Ubuntu I've found that this is a great way: http://ryanbigg.com/2010/12/ubuntu-ruby-rvm-rails-and-you

I made a screencast of that for anyone who prefers that method: http://www.rubyinside.com/how-to-install-ruby-1-9-2-and-rail...

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#29

Post by clyfe »

drnicwilliams wrote: post #16
bryanbibat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the closest we can get to ANSI color support is ANSICON http://adoxa.110mb.com/ansicon/index.html Here's what it looks like with Rspec: http://www.bryanbibat.net/images/rspec-haml.png

Yes, colors!!! I added a feature request here - https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/8786925

In cygwin, the mintty terminal has great looks (ansi colors and pretty smooth font).

http://code.google.com/p/mintty/

Re: Rails Installer - Get up and running on Windows

#30

Post by petercooper »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #11
jrnkntl wrote: post #5

I am sure there is a good reason for choosing Ruby 1.8.7-p* instead of 1.9.*, but I'd like to know that reason :)

Ruby 1.9.1 segfaults with rails 3 and 1.9.2 is in a state of flux? maybe?

Ruby 1.9.1 was only a development release anyway. Ruby 1.9.2 is a full, production release (and the first of the Ruby 1.9.x releases to be so). Ruby 1.9.2 isn't particularly "in flux" but Ruby 1.9 is generally with Ruby 1.9.3 expected by the end of the year.
Post reply on HN