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Kickstarter: rails.app

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Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#41

Post by varikin »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #23

Having been a Rails developer I don't have much trouble getting Rails up and going on a system. However I do have several friends who seem to have no end of trouble getting theirs setup working reliably. Given they are not full time developers, but they complain about how hard it is to get everything configured so I can see how useful something like this can be for many people looking to try out Rails.

I agree. I have been thinking about a shell script to setup a Django dev environment for my coworkers when needed, mainly the frontend developer because they are not familiar with or have many of the tools I take for granted. This idea is rather brilliant. It would be nice the app could open or setup a sublime text or textmate project for an app as well.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#42

Post by egypturnash »

oh god yes please I am a rails n00b who tried fooling with Rails a couple weeks ago and found the installation process INTENSELY FRUSTRATING. Especially compared to the unthinking ease of MAMP.

Gimme one .app and a directory structure I can just throw into /Applications (and later throw away if my experiments come to naught), gimme a nice control panel to stop and start Rails. Let me get it up and running on my system without hassling with the Terminal. Because I really really avoid the Terminal as much as possible.

pledges ten bucks

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#43

Post by wycats »

lukeholder wrote: post #34

Seems like this is connected to rails 4 release: sidebar: "and your input will guarantee that Rails 4 is as great for beginners as it is for experienced developers."

The main link to Rails 4 is that we've announced that Rails 4 will drop Ruby 1.8.7 support, which means that some sort of install will be mandatory on OSX beginning with Rails 4.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#44

Post by VeejayRampay »

Cushman wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #8

I'm interested in whatever Yehuda Katz comes up with, but I've been a Rails dev at a Mac shop since 2007? and I have never been too frustrated by getting Rails running. Does anyone here have specific problems? From my experience, it really has been a matter of "gem update --system; gem install rails".

> "gem update --system; gem install rails" That'll throw a permissions error on a default OS X install-- and your Rails newbie will definitely not know that that means "you should really use rvm". With that said-- a shell script that installs homebrew, git, rvm, the latest ruby, the latest rails, and a handful of useful gems, then drops you right into a shell of you brand spankin' new Rails (and Heroku!) project seem…

Yehuda obviously intends to make it polished, useful and generic enough that it could be used for other players of the Rails ecosystem. The Mac packaging itself will take some time. Making sure that the project is versatile enough that it won't break but flex nicely at the sight of the next Rails release (or RVM or rubygems or whatever) in itself is no small feeat.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#45

Post by adriand »

tptacek wrote: post #8

I'm interested in whatever Yehuda Katz comes up with, but I've been a Rails dev at a Mac shop since 2007? and I have never been too frustrated by getting Rails running. Does anyone here have specific problems? From my experience, it really has been a matter of "gem update --system; gem install rails".

I've been a Rails dev since about 2007 as well and I've had some serious, serious problems dealing with Rails, gem dependencies, the version of RubyGems itself, and so on. rvm has helped a lot with that, but my last computer got so messed up when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it took me hours of configuration to get it working properly, and I had to abandon rvm entirely and start using rbenv. And then I couldn't work on half of my older projects.

In fact, it was so messed up, it motivated me to go out and buy a new Macbook (I needed a new computer anyway, but it provided a major impetus to go out and get one).

And that's just me. Even worse is the fact that I work on a lot of Rails projects with a designer who lives in Montreal, which is a good six hour drive from where I live. I've helped him get Rails set up on his computer, but it has not been easy - far from it. As a non-techie his computer is prone to all sorts of weird shit, he hates the CLI, he needs to be walked through, line-by-line, any situation involving some weird gem dependency nonsense - it's a horrible waste of my time. Imagine trying to debug someone's effed-up gem environment via a laggy screen-sharing connection while you're on deadline - it's awful!

To sum it up: this is a project worth supporting and I'm going to support it as soon as I click the 'reply' button on this comment form.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#46

Post by VeejayRampay »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #32
foobar2k wrote: post #15

3 step process: Step 1: Download the "Command line tools for Xcode" here https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action Step 2: Install homebrew with this command /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/master/Library/Contribu... Step 3: gem install rails

Yah, rather then funding a project to make Rails easier to install on OSX (because it's not with the plethora information guides and bootstrap scripts), why not tackle real problems like concurrency and websockets in Rails.

While I understand the frustration, wycats, like any other open source developer gets to pick his battles.

Lowering the Rails entry bar is a good thing, making things simpler is a sign of maturity for a product. To address your bit about concurrency and websockets in Rails, people are working on the issue, see the talks given by Ilya Grigorik for example, concurrency will be coming to Rails at some point. And so will the integration with client-side framworks like Backbone or Ember. It just takes time.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#47

Post by VeejayRampay »

apurvamehta wrote: post #22

I feel like this is overkill. I have been using RailsReady ( https://github.com/joshfng/railsready ) to setup several Mac and Ubuntu boxes and it has never been more than one click.

To be fair, he said he didn't necessarily want to duplicate the effort of others. I'm sure he will garner any information he can from those projects to help make that app awesome.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#48

Post by getsat »

foobar2k wrote: post #15

3 step process: Step 1: Download the "Command line tools for Xcode" here https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action Step 2: Install homebrew with this command /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/master/Library/Contribu... Step 3: gem install rails

You missed a few steps:

  brew install rbenv
  brew install ruby-build
Copy the line it gives you to your shell's rc file and source it/open a new term:

  rbenv install 1.9.3-p125
  rbenv global 1.9.3-p125
  gem update --system
  gem install rails
  gem install bundler # optional, recommended
When a new version of Ruby comes out:

  brew update
  brew upgrade
Then just rbenv install and rbenv global it.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#49

Post by wmoxam »

foobar2k wrote: post #15

3 step process: Step 1: Download the "Command line tools for Xcode" here https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action Step 2: Install homebrew with this command /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/master/Library/Contribu... Step 3: gem install rails

Rails 3+ requires a js runtime too, if you don't install one you'll get an ugly crash the first time you try to do anything.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#50

Post by lukeholder »

wycats wrote: post #43
lukeholder wrote: post #34

Seems like this is connected to rails 4 release: sidebar: "and your input will guarantee that Rails 4 is as great for beginners as it is for experienced developers."

The main link to Rails 4 is that we've announced that Rails 4 will drop Ruby 1.8.7 support, which means that some sort of install will be mandatory on OSX beginning with Rails 4.

of course... didn't think of that.
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