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Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

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Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#31

Post by veyron »

jff wrote: post #19

I think this is partly why so many of my Mac-using colleagues have a Linux VM for doing development; every programming-type task I tried to do on my Mac was an exercise in frustration. At least there's finally a set of command-line compilers you can get without having to download XCode (it's free, once you pay $99 to become a developer! I thought I already was a developer, which is why I want compilers...) Personally…

There's a free 200MB download of the command line build utilities. Xcode proper (4+ GB) is also free ...

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#32

Post by jasonkester »

lloeki wrote: post #29
getsat wrote: post #22

user@brand-new-mac $ which rails /usr/bin/rails What? OSX has shipped with (some version of) Rails since Leopard. You don't need to install a compiler or compile anything to use Rails on a Mac. It comes with sqlite3, too.

$ /usr/bin/rails Rails is not currently installed on this system. To get the latest version, simply type: $ sudo gem install rails You can then rerun your "rails" command. > The basic database program that Rails uses is SQLLite3, and you will need to install this to work with it. yet Tiger had sqlite3 already. What's more, Ruby is installed already. One can 'gem install rails' and have the latest version landing in /…

Added bonus: running sudo gem install rails spins for 20 minutes then dies with some cryptic error message.

At least that was what happened when I tried to install rails on my brand new macbook air.

To be fair though, open source software hates me. This has been pretty much the same experience I've had every single time I've tried to install anything with gem install, apt get or yum install. On every flavor of linux/unix on any box I've ever touched.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#33

Post by pyre »

batista wrote: post #14
nicholassmith wrote: post #7

Maybe I'm coming at this from a different perspective as I've spent a number of years doing that whole "NINJAS BUILD FROM SRC.TAR" thing, but installing Rails under Mac has always been pretty straight forward. Get RVM > Get Ruby Version X > RubyGems > Rails > then fork off for databases if I want something fancy. You are installing something that by it's nature requires a bit more understanding that just clicking on…

> You are installing something that by it's nature requires a bit more understanding that just clicking on a .exe. I don't think it inherently require anything like that for _installing_. There is essential complexity (e.g the complexity of developing a RoR app), and accidental, inessential, complexity. Installation not being a one click / command process is inessential complexity. It's just that the people involved…

The php interpreter isn't used by system processes. I'm not sure how essential the stock Ruby interpreter, but I know that on Linux the system Perl & Python interpreters are used by system processes and upgrading them could potentially break things.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#34

Post by calinet6 »

lloeki wrote: post #29
getsat wrote: post #22

user@brand-new-mac $ which rails /usr/bin/rails What? OSX has shipped with (some version of) Rails since Leopard. You don't need to install a compiler or compile anything to use Rails on a Mac. It comes with sqlite3, too.

$ /usr/bin/rails Rails is not currently installed on this system. To get the latest version, simply type: $ sudo gem install rails You can then rerun your "rails" command. > The basic database program that Rails uses is SQLLite3, and you will need to install this to work with it. yet Tiger had sqlite3 already. What's more, Ruby is installed already. One can 'gem install rails' and have the latest version landing in /…

While this is technically true, it's important to note that it's not usually desired.

You should be running a fairly recent version to keep up with patches or match your server, you should be running RVM so you can keep a gemset and use bundler, and you should use homebrew to make installing other packages easier.

Not that any of that is difficult, and you're right to a degree: you can get started learning using one command and go from there.

It's really not that complicated.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#35

Post by jff »

veyron wrote: post #31
jff wrote: post #19

I think this is partly why so many of my Mac-using colleagues have a Linux VM for doing development; every programming-type task I tried to do on my Mac was an exercise in frustration. At least there's finally a set of command-line compilers you can get without having to download XCode (it's free, once you pay $99 to become a developer! I thought I already was a developer, which is why I want compilers...) Personally…

There's a free 200MB download of the command line build utilities. Xcode proper (4+ GB) is also free ...

I was unable to find free versions of either of these, for Snow Leopard, when I looked a year ago. At that time, Lion was utterly unusable (not sure if it's any better), so I just gave up and got a Linux VM for that laptop.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#36

Post by koryteg »

i found this article very encouraging. first i started developing on a windows 7 machine, before "railsinstaller.exe" was around. It was a pain to setup. soon after i was able to get my hands on a mac. still being pretty new to rails it was a whole new world of learning; git, ssh, .bash_profile, unix commands, figuring out gemsets on rvm, why one rails app would install rmagick, but another would error out, what the hell is GCC?

working through these things was a huge help and eye opening experience for me. being new to OOP and web app development it seems like there is a never ending list of things to learn, and everyone out there with their computer science degree has the knowledge already that i am missing. so i guess it is encouraging to see a list of things that this "engineyard training provider" is struggling with, and i worked through it all and have a pretty good grasp on now.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#37

Post by revscat »

veyron wrote: post #31
jff wrote: post #19

I think this is partly why so many of my Mac-using colleagues have a Linux VM for doing development; every programming-type task I tried to do on my Mac was an exercise in frustration. At least there's finally a set of command-line compilers you can get without having to download XCode (it's free, once you pay $99 to become a developer! I thought I already was a developer, which is why I want compilers...) Personally…

There's a free 200MB download of the command line build utilities. Xcode proper (4+ GB) is also free ...

https://developer.apple.com/downloads/

Requires sign in, but free otherwise.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#38

Post by philwelch »

j45 wrote: post #27
philwelch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of Rails isn't to replace PHP.

It might not be, but our Rails heads sure do like talking about PHP a lot. If a technology is truly supposed to be accessible it needs to actually, be accessible instead of carrying an air of superiority, otherwise software continues to suffer.

Rails isn't supposed to be accessible the way PHP is, i.e. built into every shared hosting account with unlimited flexibility as to what you can do with it. If that was the right way to go for web applications, there would have been no need for Rails in the first place, since PHP would have been sufficient.

Re: Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is

#39

Post by apl »

batista wrote: post #14
nicholassmith wrote: post #7

Maybe I'm coming at this from a different perspective as I've spent a number of years doing that whole "NINJAS BUILD FROM SRC.TAR" thing, but installing Rails under Mac has always been pretty straight forward. Get RVM > Get Ruby Version X > RubyGems > Rails > then fork off for databases if I want something fancy. You are installing something that by it's nature requires a bit more understanding that just clicking on…

> You are installing something that by it's nature requires a bit more understanding that just clicking on a .exe. I don't think it inherently require anything like that for _installing_. There is essential complexity (e.g the complexity of developing a RoR app), and accidental, inessential, complexity. Installation not being a one click / command process is inessential complexity. It's just that the people involved…

  > [...] accidental, inessential, complexity [...]
Sure, but when that complexity is so utterly minuscule, what's the point in shielding users from it? Especially when you could argue that it benefits the user who will, at the very least, roughly know what's powering his application?
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