Installing Rails on a Mac Shouldn't Be As Hard As It Is • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by JonnieCache » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:31 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #23

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL http://bit.ly/HyK0NG) That looks terrifying.

Too often you see advice like that. And this is supposed to be from technical users who know about security. And we wonder why mundanes click on spyware scams…

How is it any different from downloading any other code and running it?

Are you saying you audit every piece of unsigned code you run?

I admit that putting bit.ly into the chain of trust is quite a bold step, but is it really that different to, say, the rubygems server? Or your wireless router?

EDIT: also, LOL at "mundanes."

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

#42

Post by TylerE » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #41

rmc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too often you see advice like that. And this is supposed to be from technical users who know about security. And we wonder why mundanes click on spyware scams…

How is it any different from downloading any other code and running it? Are you saying you audit every piece of unsigned code you run? I admit that putting bit.ly into the chain of trust is quite a bold step, but is it really that different to, say, the rubygems server? Or your wireless router? EDIT: also, LOL at "mundanes."

Imagine Bit.ly gets backdoored, and that shortlink is repointed at a script that just contains rm -rf /

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

#43

Post by phaylon » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #28

Unless you're planning to deploy to a production server running OS X, I don't see why you'd care about Rails running natively on your Mac. Why not develop against a VM running the same OS as your server?

What if you'd like to develop a gem not for any specific platform? What if you want to develop desktop apps, or make CLI apps to automate little things on your usual platform?

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

#44

Post by JonnieCache » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #42

JonnieCache wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it any different from downloading any other code and running it? Are you saying you audit every piece of unsigned code you run? I admit that putting bit.ly into the chain of trust is quite a bold step, but is it really that different to, say, the rubygems server? Or your wireless router? EDIT: also, LOL at "mundanes."

Imagine Bit.ly gets backdoored, and that shortlink is repointed at a script that just contains rm -rf /

Imagine your wifi box gets backdoored.

Imagine your ISP's router gets backdoored.

Imagine if the server you got your bash from gets backdoored.

Imagine if the rails repo gets backdoored.

Imagine if the plant where apple images the macbook HDDs gets backdoored.

Imagine all the people, living for today...

(But yeah, personally, I'd forgo the bit.ly part as its unnecessary.)

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

#45

Post by jasonshell » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

technomancy wrote: post #21

shane_mcd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you'd recommend installing Rails in a VM? It's a framework, not an environment.

You want development to match production as closely as possible, otherwise you're setting yourself up for nasty surprises down the line.

I found using a staging environment that is a clone of production to trump developing in a vm. All code goes through staging before production so there is no surprises

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

#46

Post by whalesalad » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:45 PM UTC

Uhh. Rails on a mac is incredibly easy. And I'm a Django developer who's never really used it much.

Got new MacBook Air. Install Xcode. Install homebrew. Install rbenv followed by ruby 1.9.x. gem install rails. Dunzo.

SQLite comes with OS X. You can install Postgres pretty easily using homebrew.

If you're gonna be a web developer and complain about something being more difficult than double-clicking an exe ... well then you might be doing it wrong. hah.

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

#47

Post by eli » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

phaylon wrote: post #43

eli wrote: post #28

Unless you're planning to deploy to a production server running OS X, I don't see why you'd care about Rails running natively on your Mac. Why not develop against a VM running the same OS as your server?

What if you'd like to develop a gem not for any specific platform? What if you want to develop desktop apps, or make CLI apps to automate little things on your usual platform?

Well, yeah, that's almost a truism: if your app needs to run on OS X, then it needs to run on OS X.

I think very few Rails apps need to run on OS X, however.

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

#48

Post by JonnieCache » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

Far too high a proportion of the questions in #ruby are about installation.

Often people come in having (naturally) tried to install it from their distro's package manager. First we have to explain to them why this is a bad idea and persuade them to remove it. Then, often they have tried to install it from source, passing some fucked up value to --prefix, and they have to be helped to clean that mess up.

Then we tell them to use rvm, but someone pipes up about rbenv and friends and we have to explain the differences. Then it turns out that they didn't have openssl-dev or something installed so they have to recompile ruby again, or someone has to try and remember the magic spell to compile the openssl bit of ruby separately, which nobody ever can.

THEN it turns out that all they want to do with ruby is run redmine, which has some other specific requirements that nobody in the channel knows or cares about.

Basically, when yehuda katz finishes that project of his, freenode will be measurably happier, although the problems with OS packages will remain, I imagine forever.

The real root of the problem is that a lot of the things which make the ruby ecosystem highly dysfunctional are the same things that make it so great. Primarily the fast pace.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:00 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by phaylon » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:01 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #47

phaylon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you'd like to develop a gem not for any specific platform? What if you want to develop desktop apps, or make CLI apps to automate little things on your usual platform?

Well, yeah, that's almost a truism: if your app needs to run on OS X, then it needs to run on OS X. I think very few Rails apps need to run on OS X, however.

I guess it just depends on the target. For starting out serious development I'd certainly agree with all you say, although I personally prefer the local development and tests on staging method, since it means I know it runs on at least two systems, at least with the code where it's possible. It might be nicer for beginners though to be able to quickly dive in.