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Programming Linux

LinRails — Ruby On Rails For Linux 201

Posted by kdawson from the be-the-first-on-your-block dept.
foobarf00 writes "LinRails is a binary package that includes Ruby-1.8.6, Rubygems-0.9.4, Rails 1.2.3, Mongrel 1.0.1, MySQL-5.0.41, ncurses-5.6, OpenSSL-0.9.8e, and zlib-1.2.3. Its goal is to make it easy to get a Ruby on Rails development environment running in no time. This initial 0.1 release doesn't have a Web server in the package; opinions are solicited as to which to include."
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LinRails — Ruby On Rails For Linux More

LinRails — Ruby On Rails For Linux

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  • ...up2date?

    :-P

    monk.e.boy

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Eudial ( 590661 )
      I'm running Slackware you insensitive clod.

  • Aptitude (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thechanklybore ( 1091971 )
    Makes this so easy it's hardly worth the packaging bother. Although I guess people still saddled with the atrocious Yum will like it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Klaidas ( 981300 )
      With my finger on the trigger i run ./configure...
      Seriously, aptitude and apt-get are probably the best installation methods I've seen (except for .exes on Windows...)

      • Re:Aptitude (Score:5, Insightful)

        by compm375 ( 847701 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @09:07AM (#19742643)
        How are .exes on Windows better than apt-based packaging?
        Windows:
        1)find .exe
        2)download .exe
        3)go through installation wizard

        apt:
        1)if you already know package, do apt-get install ... and no clicking through an installer
        or
        1)search for a package with apt-cache, aptitude, or synaptic
        2)install, again without installer
        or
        1)find a .deb
        2)download .deb
        3)install .deb with dpkg or gdebi again with no installer to click through

        I don't see how .exes are better as an installation method.

        • Re:Aptitude (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Klaidas ( 981300 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:04AM (#19743191)
          Yeah, but what about those times the the package is not in th repo, and the .deb needs some obscure libraries who are also not included, and you have to compile everything? And then compiling also needs something, which depends on even more files... Also, let's not forget that pretty much every program can run on Windows, but doesn't have a linux port, or the linux alternative is far away from being better that the windows' original. If you know exactly what program you want, and it is in the repo, and everything you need is in that repo, and there won't be any conlicts, then yes. if not, .exe FTW.

          • Yeah, but what about those times the the package is not in th repo, and the .deb needs some obscure libraries who are also not included, and you have to compile everything?

            The vast majority of stuff you need is already packaged and in the debian repos. There's rarely any need to build anything yourself, save when you need a newer version of package foo.

            The other problems with .exes are that you may get a new copy of libraries with each program you install, leading to bloat. The alternative is that the

        • As a frustrated Windows user who would like to switch to Linux but can't get it to work, let me explain this to you:

          1) in my experience a Windows .exe always works regardless of what Windows version I'm using, while a Linux package generally doesn't work on the Linux distro I'm trying.

          2) if I'm given a link to a .exe that will fix my internet connection, it's rather obvious to me that I can download the .exe from another PC, put it on a USB key and run it on my own PC. however, if I get an apt-get line to h

          • As a frustrated Windows user who would like to switch to Linux but can't get it to work, let me explain this to you:

            1) in my experience a Windows .exe always works regardless of what Windows version I'm using, while a Linux package generally doesn't work on the Linux distro I'm trying.

            What kind of Linux are you using? I would suggest getting yourself a copy of Ubuntu. You shouldn't have this problem unless you're using something like an old version of redhat/fedora.

            2) if I'm given a link to a .exe that

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by jack455 ( 748443 )
            At some point I installed Fedora Core 2 (now on 7), and the install was very smooth. I installed KDE and already knew how to use that from using the Knoppix Live CD.

            Upon First Boot I immediately allowed Fedora to AutoUpdate, but then had trouble. Without a tutorial, I searched for and found software I wanted to install but I thought I had to compile from 'somepackage.tar.gz'. Oops. Seems silly to me now, but I didn't have anyone helping me. I knew I could go to forums, but didn't. I then found out about rpm

  • It does have a very good web server (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fjan11 ( 649654 ) * on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @08:04AM (#19742179) Homepage
    > It includes Mongrel 1.01 [...]
    >This initial 0.1 release doesn't have a Web server
    Mongrel is a very good web server, especially for a development environment. (And the ruby package includes webbrick on top of that). Current 'best practice' deployments of RoR applications usually use a pack of Mongrels behind a load balancer (such as mod_proxy or Pound), and/or Apache or Nginx to serve static pages. If you want to completely mirror your production environment in your development/testing environment than including those would the logical choice.

    • Why not a metapackage? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by k-zed ( 92087 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @08:19AM (#19742277) Homepage Journal
      This thing is completely pointless and unnecessary under modern Linux package management systems. One could just create a metapackage with the proper dependencies.

      Even without such a metapackage, one can install this software with a single apt-get command line. Windows-based development methodology is bad enough, let's not infect linux/unix development with it.
      • Yes, but no one has done that.

        And last I checked Debian didn't include Gems which is really annoying if you're learning Ruby and a book mentions a bunch of gems you should install.
      • I completely second the above statement. Nothing is more stupid then creating a package of your own, that installs other software bypassing the package manager. Since there is no oversight/credibility, it is a very good way to root other machines: just release something that appears to be usefull and install a little backdoor in it. Make sure the payload is delayed to avoid immediate detection, you can just hide it somewhere in that huge tarball as nobody will like to sift through all that stuff.
        That is a v
        • I don't.

          I rather prefer a package (you know like this dumb doubleclick on windows) with absolutly everything you need to get started than the Linux way of installation. Each time I have to install a new stuff, it fails on the first run (except those which are part of the distribution)...And three hours of googling later it "may" install the program and it "may" run. You feel like you are wasting your time (especially if it is for your job).

          Why?

          I just spent a whole afternoon yesterday to install a popular pr
          • It's good that you documented your struggles with installing eclipse. I too have found it a pain to install. But you have only summed up your problems (and is for a development environment FCS! you should be able to hold up your own trousers). You did not address any of the advantages of using the distribution provided package manager, some that I listed above (the rest is obvious, for instance reduction of maintenance).
            Calling for a monolithic package will do away with a lot of these advantages. Your probl
          • That's funny, I was about to suggest that people instead just install the latest release of NetBeans 6.0. It comes with Ruby and the Rails packages (including webrick) installed by default. Of course, this won't work if you don't have Java installed, but if you do have something relatively recent (Java 1.5 or later), then it's pretty painless to get it up and running.
    • Last time I checked, Mongrel was still single threaded, meaning that if you wanted to put together a decent website, you had to run multiple mongrel instances and have Apache load balance between them. The unfortunate reality of Rails in my experience, having deployed several Rails websites (example [revver.com]), is that it is still a toy, it certainly isn't "enterprise ready", and while its possible to make it scale, its an uphill struggle (I'm not the only one [radicalbehavior.com] who thinks so).

      I can, on the other hand, highly recomm

  • Why MySQL (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by Simon (S2) ( 600188 )
    And not the vastly superior PostgreSQL? I really like FKs in my relational data. And I know that MySQL does support them, but not with myISAM tables.
    This is really not meant to be a flame, but pgsql is really better than mysql, so why not include the better one? Or am I wrong?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      because MySQL is free.

      See, you're not the only one that can spew garbage.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 )
      I imagine a meta-package like this is catering to the average user who just wants a common setup easy to just drop in and go. MySQL is more commonly used, and thusly it seems the logical choice for such a meta-package.

      Though I'm looking to move off a web-host and build a server out of my house. Everyone keeps saying PostgreSQL is better. Why? For my average use, what benefits will it offer me?

      If I throw some common PHP/SQL stuff on there, will it run faster (Gallery2, LotGD, phpbb3, etc)?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Simon (S2) ( 600188 )

        Though I'm looking to move off a web-host and build a server out of my house. Everyone keeps saying PostgreSQL is better. Why? For my average use, what benefits will it offer me?

        If I throw some common PHP/SQL stuff on there, will it run faster (Gallery2, LotGD, phpbb3, etc)?

        I know that a lot of people here will kill me and say "but you can do this in mysql too!! (somehow)", but:
        - Integrity: if i delete from people where id=1; all child tables of people (telephone numbers, addresses and whatnot) are kept. On top of that you are allowed to delete the parent if it has childs. I hate this default behavior.
        - ACID
        - Stored Procs: You may not use them, but one day you may will. Maybe you will have to insert rows in a table after an update on another, or implement some other things th

        • - Integrity is always nice!
          - ACID - InnoDB seems to provide that for me. I've never lost data on MySQL.
          - Stored Procs - We use these at work on our insanely complex MSSQL setups that I loathe, but I don't know that I'll ever have use for them on my server, and I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed this was a standard SQL feature. MySQL doesn't support stored procs?
          - Triggers - I'm not sure what these are.

          I'll Google some PosgreSQL vs MySQL comparisons and benchmarks.

          • - Stored Procs - We use these at work on our insanely complex MSSQL setups that I loathe, but I don't know that I'll ever have use for them on my server, and I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed this was a standard SQL feature. MySQL doesn't support stored procs?

            It does, but only really basic stuff.

            - Triggers - I'm not sure what these are.

            You can make a trigger on a table that triggers before or after a row is inserted/updated/deleted and runs a spc or a dml statement.

      • Ok, on site (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Colin Smith ( 2679 )
        We have Oracle 8, Sybase 12 and postgresql 8 (I think).

        The whole factory is run off of postgresql.
        The financial system is run off of Oracle.
        The timesheet system is run off of Sybase.

        Guess the systems which gave the most and least problems.

        The winner is PostgreSQL. Untouched for months, perhaps even years. Next we have Oracle which is a pain in the arse to manage but never failed. and last place came sybase which had to be touched, managed and/or restarted regularly[1].

        In terms of transactions, the factory

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shish ( 588640 )
        I've recently switched several websites from mysql to postgres, and found:
        • Postgres doesn't fall over, die, and corrupt all your data when the system runs out of RAM
        • Postgres runs slightly faster when the table is too big to fit in ram
        • Postgres' query optimiser is *much* better[1]

        Speed of common PHP webapps will depend on what they've been optimised for -- postgres runs all SQL fairly quickly; mysql runs things quickly if you spend extra time and effort making your queries mysql-friendly.

        [1] An exampl

        • SELECT * FROM images WHERE images.id IN (SELECT image_id FROM tags WHERE tag = 'a_tag')
          I would write this as

          SELECT *
          FROM images,
                    tags
          WHERE images.id = tags.image_id AND
                      tag = 'a_tag'

          no need to use a heavy IN clause, but maybe your real query was more complicated than that and you used it only as an example.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by weighn ( 578357 )

      vastly superior...Or am I wrong?
      oh yeah, here we go. Have we not discussed this before [slashdot.org]. Very recently at that.

      And for a web server, why not lighttpd?. Its vastly faster. Or IIS ... fastly vaster...

      • And for a web server, why not lighttpd?. Its vastly faster. Or IIS ... fastly vaster...
        Well, because the webserver can change between the production an developement machine, but the db should not (at least IMHO). I can develop with mongrel, webrick, lighttpd or whatever and then deploy on another webserver, but this is most of the time probably not the case with the database.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      And not the vastly superior PostgreSQL? I really like FKs in my relational data. And I know that MySQL does support them, but not with myISAM tables.
      This is really not meant to be a flame, but pgsql is really better than mysql, so why not include the better one? Or am I wrong?

      Why MySQL? But of course, so there's something to whine about.

      If you used RoR you'll figure out all advanced features of a database are left unused, so why bother.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Xest ( 935314 ) *
      MySQL just seems more common and I can't see that changing. Pretty much every web development book and site uses MySQL for database teachings so as people come into web development I'd argue it's just going to increase the MySQL user base even more.

      For most people's web development needs MySQL just does what you need. Chances are if you need something MySQL doesn't have then you're already competent enough to not need a package like this and set it all up yourself anyway, this just makes it easier for those

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by killjoe ( 766577 )
      Why bother with either. Just include sqlite and be done with it. Rails can take care of all the data integrity for you anyway. Combine that with microapache and you are done.
      • > Why bother with either. Just include sqlite and be done with it.

        Sure, nice little database. Not much for multiple users and large data tho...

        > Rails can take care of all the data integrity for you anyway.

        ah, no - applications do a horrible job of managing data constraints over time. That is, you might test the bajesus out of your code this version and next - but are unlikely to test how code with this version handles data created with the code ten versions before. None of the data we're talking a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
      "This is really not meant to be a flame, but my random opinion is really better than your random opinion."

      Next time you don't want to flame, please provide reasons for people to assume you're not flaming. Just stating, as if a fact, that X is better than Y without any figures to back it up or explaination why you think that is, looks a lot like flaming.

      Not saying that you are, but stating something as a fact without any evidence is either A) flaming or B) religion. Some people would go so far as to equate t

      • Next time you don't want to flame, please provide reasons for people to assume you're not flaming. Just stating, as if a fact, that X is better than Y without any figures to back it up or explaination why you think that is, looks a lot like flaming.
        You are right. I was a bit lazy. Here [slashdot.org] you go.
    • I always use PostgreSQL for production but for this package Sqlite would be perfect.
      Sqlite is perfect to develop with until you have something usable. Then you can switch to Postgres (or MySQL or whatever) and run your tests to make sure everything works.
    • The problem is that MySQL has the lion's share of the market, despite being (relatively speaking) crap. It's a lot like windows in that respect: if you want to ensure that a machine you sell can run random software for grannies, you (sadly) generally put windows on it. Likewise, if you want to ensure easy webapp development, you go with the database that can work with lots of other stuff.

      That said, it's ass-backwards. People should fix the bug --- that some software doesn't have a database abstraction la
    • I have no relationship with the LinRails project, and this is the first I've heard of it, but even I can tell you why they include mysql database. They include it because it's more popular and quicker to get up and running.

      The idea of LinRails isn't to spread good database ideology. It's to get Ruby on Rails up and running as quickly as possible for the greatest number of users.

      The whole thing is irrelevant, anyhow. Chances are if you want to make a Rails app, you already know what database server you'll

  • Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @08:12AM (#19742233) Journal
    This is great news for me. I recently built an Ubuntu system on which to do media production (music, video, like that). It's not my primary system yet, but I've been so disgusted with Windows Vista and Mac OS that I decided it was time to make (another) try at doing my work on a Linux system.

    After three months, the results have far exceeded my expectation. I'm very impressed with the maturity of music production apps for Linux and the performance has been as strong as I expected. I'm still a Linux noob, but the experience has been positively inspirational. In fact, it's been a lot like my first experiences with media production on my first Mac, where just about every day brought another new way to look at the work.

    I'm not a programmer, but I'm learning Ruby and this new release gives me one more reason to sit down at the Linux box instead of my others.
    • Sounds good, but don't use this silly thing.

      Just run synaptic, find ruby on rails, and install. I think it will suggest mysql automatically. If not install that too.

      You'd don't need anything more than that. Then just follow any ror tutorial on the web. It's pretty easy.

  • Apache? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @08:13AM (#19742241) Homepage Journal
    Color me stupid here, but isn't Apache the de facto standard that most everyone uses?

    Some may argue that better alternatives exist (of which I'm not really aware) but since Apache is so popular and common place, wouldn't it seem the logical piece of this meta-package?

    People who want specific packages for specific reasons are going to set up their own environment. For a pre-setup environment, shouldn't you shoot for the common setup?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by andr0meda ( 167375 )

      Agreed.

      Apache is not only the most widely used web server, it is also the most supported one, of good quality, and offers countless possibilities alongside the purpose of your typical RR demo program, which is nice to have if you think like a biz.

    • Re:Apache? (Score:5, Informative)

      by FooBarWidget ( 556006 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @08:51AM (#19742509)
      Ruby on Rails cannot be run in Apache.

      Yes, I was stunned when I found this out last year. If one wants to run RoR on Apache, then one has to use either mod_fastcgi (or mod_fcgi or whatever it was called; it'd run RoR as a FastCGI process) or mod_ruby. mod_ruby seems to be abandoned, and I have heard stories about excessive memory usage. mod_f(ast)cgi doesn't seem to work on Apache 2 at all.

      So there are two ways to run RoR: either in Lighttpd (which has proper FastCGI support) or in Mongrel (a web server which can run RoR directly).

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Dark$ide ( 732508 )
        > Ruby on Rails cannot be run in Apache. How do you arrive at that conclusion? I have RoR running in Apache. It needs some funky .htaccess stuff and I have a virt host defined for it.

        # SetEnv RAILS_ENV development
        ServerName rails
        DocumentRoot /home/Dark$ide/ruby/myapp/public/
        ErrorLog /home/Dark$ide/ruby/myapp/log/apache.log


        Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
        AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all



        Alias /ruby /home/Dark$ide/ruby/myapp/public

        Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
        AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all

        The .htaccess file in the public directory needs a quick tweak to match the Alias to get the rewrite rules working. Works well.

        • The .htaccess file in the public directory needs a quick tweak to match the Alias to get the rewrite rules working. Works well.

          Oops! You said "quick" and ".htaccess" in the same sentence. From Apache's own documentation [apache.org], .htaccess files are a last-ditch solution for when you don't control the server and can't edit its config files directly. Really, if you can help it, don't ever use them.

          Oh, if you use some web application that comes with a bunch of .htaccess files that you don't want to manually merge into your httpd.conf (or included files), you can use the Include [apache.org] directive to pull them into you config file once rather th

        • Well yeah, I suppose that it'll work if you run it as regular CGI. But then it will be very slow. Extremely slow. Almost unusabily slow. It will have to start RoR for each request, which can take 2-6 seconds depending on the speed of the server.
      • Yes, it cannot be run "in" apache, and this is a good thing.

        The way most rails stacks are setup your webserver (I use apache for instance) gets a request.
        The web server looks for the file on the disk, if it's there it sends it and that's the end.
        If the file is not there, the server asks a load balancer (ModProxyBalancer, Pound, Nginx, even FastCGI*)
        to send a request to one of a pool of persistent rails processes which can then handle it.

        Now, if you serve up say, 5 images and 3 JS or CSS files on a page on a
        • "Yes, it cannot be run "in" apache, and this is a good thing."

          While mod_ruby runs Ruby apps inside Apache, FastCGI doesn't. FastCGI is like CGI but keeps processes around so that they can handle requests more quickly.

          "Now, if you serve up say, 5 images and 3 JS or CSS files on a page on average, that means that 5 out of 8 requests will use a bloated webserver process containing RoR, when in reality we need far fewer processes since only 1 in 8 requests actually ever touches ruby code. Less loaded and runnin
          • Good point wrt copy on write. The most common methods of deploying rails (with mongrel_cluster) do not use fork() but I just found this article on doing so if anyone's interested in it. http://izumi.plan99.net/blog/?p=19 [plan99.net]

            I would like to say for the record, that I didn't say that FastCGI ran apps inside apache, I don't know where you got that from.
            • Actually, that's my blog. :)
              • What a coincidence :) Well, thanks for pointing it out. I've read a number of articles on putting together rails stacks and yours is the first to suggest forking. Next time I deploy a new app I just may try some of the stuff you've suggested.

                By the way, great work on the blog, I like how comprehensive your posts are.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fweeky ( 41046 )
        mod_fastcgi runs fine in Apache 2, threaded mode and all, and has done so for many years. mod_fcgi is an alternative with, supposedly, a smarter application manager (that's the thing which spawns additional FastCGI servers as needed), and it too should work fine in Apache 2, though we've only used mod_fastcgi in production.

        This is our preferred way of running PHP, too. Keeps the webserver nice and lean and isolated and stable. On the other hand, I think it would be tidier if PHP had something like mongre
      • Aroo?

        I'm running several RoR sites using Apache2 with fast_cgi. So, doesn't run at all? Which distro? I'm using Ubuntu and it's been working -great-.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Simon (S2) ( 600188 )

      Color me stupid here, but isn't Apache the de facto standard that most everyone uses?
      Yes, for production environments of course, but for development it does not really matter that your webserver is scalable/fast/modular/supported/whatever so webrick or mongrel are better choices.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
        ...unless your development shop considers the whole deployment aspect part of development too. I've basically seen both flavors, and many inbetween.

        Personally; I know the brand of webserver isn't supposed to matter to the webapp, but I'm not betting any money on it. I like my development environment to be as much like production as possible ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        Yes, for production environments of course, but for development it does not really matter that your webserver is scalable/fast/modular/supported/whatever so webrick or mongrel are better choices.

        It doesn't hurt either. Especially since you're supposed to use as close environment to production as possible. I run Apache on my winbox for dev and I'm perfectly happy with it (next step is moving to a linux box.. but not yet).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Enahs ( 1606 )

      Color me stupid here, but isn't Apache the de facto standard that most everyone uses?


      OK, you're colored stupid, champ.



      Seriously, Mongrel is good for development; it's a good mix of fast and easy. Though why someone would need an *easy* package of something available as a RubyGem is still beyond me. If you can't run 'gem install rails -y' you'll never get a Rails app going.

  • It seems to me that this would have made a good "Ask Slashdot" article.

    All it would have taken was editing a word or two of the submitted story to make the implicit question more direct and, voila, there's the article...

  • Show me one site.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've read a little about Ruby on Rails. Will somebody list one site that's on Rails and is worth a flip? I've seen the hype, but I'd love to see a site that talks the talk. Thanks!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pasamio ( 737659 )
      I believe Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com) is running RoR
    • Fraternity Live [fraternitylive.com]
    • My impressions of RoR is that it has some useful scripts to build a skeleton app, it packages up the environment for you, and Ruby is less painful than C. I have yet to find any compelling reason to switch from perl or PHP, especially given that RoR doesn't scale well.

  • Mongrel is a web server (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gunark ( 227527 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @09:06AM (#19742635)

    Mongrel is a web server, hence this package includes a web server (unless it doesn't actually contain Mongrel, despite what the writeup says). Also, Ruby 1.8.6 comes with WEBrick, which is a the web server Rails uses by default...

    Anyway isn't a simplified Rails installer for Linux kind of redundant? Most newer Linux distros I've seen already have a native package that installs Ruby on Rails and all its dependencies. Most people will probably find the Instant Rails [rubyforge.org] package a lot more useful, since it does the same for Windows.

  • Special Announcement (Score:5, Funny)

    by delire ( 809063 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @09:16AM (#19742749)

    After months of hard work I finally bring Debian/Ubuntu/Xandros/[derivativus infinitum] users a computer program that will not only download the latest RoR development packages for you, it will also notify you of new versions when they become available later.

    Moreso, all the packages I provide are registered in a special database so that should you choose to remove the below packages, you can do so with ease using a GUI button or the command line!

    Please download the following code into your computer terminal and compile it by hitting ENTER (one-key compile for convenience).

    sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install rails ruby rubygems libruby1.8-extras mysql libncurses-ruby openssl libzlib-ruby

    The above program is licensed under the "Why Make It Harder Than It Needs 2B License". Please use this link [debian.org] to make a donation to my project.

    • Re:Special Announcement (Score:4, Informative)

      by foobarf00 ( 666782 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @10:08AM (#19743229)
      From their blog:

      "We decided to this so that we can share the same development environment with all the team. If programmers have a different Linux distro/version, they will still share the same development environment. This prevents programmers to say "well, it works on mine" when there is a problem. Also if you have a Linux distro package, versions may change when a new Linux distro is released. Also if you want to upgrade to the latest and greatest you are at the mercy of the Linux distribution. We will try to always have the latest versions of each tool. This helps to solve those problems."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ari{Dal} ( 68669 )
      If only it were that easy.

      I had to get three xen debian instances up and running with Mongrel and RoR a few months ago, and the only bigger headache I've ever encountered was getting trac running with svn. The number of dependencies that kept cropping up was just unbelievable. I spent about four hours working it through on the first instance. Thank god for xensource "clone server".
  • The Ruby bundles for Windows have their place but for Linux and OS X, just build Ruby from source, install gems, and you are good to go. Once Ruby and gem are installed use gem for everything.

    A bit off topic, but useful advice: I set up editor projects (TextMate, gedit, etc.) for:

    1. /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8 - location of Ruby source code for standard libraries on my system
    2. /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems - location of local gem installs (often contain examples/tests and documentation files) on my system

    W
  • Zope [zope.org]. - What Rails wants to be when it grows up.

    Also be sure to check out Plone [plone.org], Symfony [symfony-project.com], Django [djangoproject.com], CakePHP [cakephp.org], Prado [pradosoft.com] and Turbogears [turbogears.com] before you blindly join the overhyped Rails bandwagon.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by samjensen ( 1098285 )
      Zope, Plone, Django, Turbogears -- cool.
      Cake, Symfony -- stay the hell away from these crummy frameworks.

      And sure Rails may be overhyped, but that doesn't mean that it's bad.
      • Cake, Symfony -- stay the hell away from these crummy frameworks.

        Care to elaborate? I'd like an educated opinion, why you think these aren't worth it. Do you have real experience with them or did you just dick around with each for 20 minutes? Or is it PHP that you don't like? I'm really interested. Propels XML is the only potential downside I can see. And that doesn't seen to much of a problem.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by samjensen ( 1098285 )

          Care to elaborate? I'd like an educated opinion, why you think these aren't worth it. Do you have real experience with them or did you just dick around with each for 20 minutes?

          I did say that based on a quick hour-or-less session I did with several PHP frameworks. I checked out Symfony, Cake, Qcodo, Zend framework, and I may have taken a cursory look at a couple other. After evaluating those last summer (about a year ago exactly) I ended up using the Zend framework for that project.

          Both Symfony and Cake seemed nice at first, but I couldn't even follow their 101 tutorials because the instructions were not correct for the current stable versions. Sure I could have figured it out,

  • I found Ruby to be one of the easiest environments to get up and running quickly already.

    It's a one-liner apt-get, and then let "gem" to the rest for you (kind of like apt-get/cpan for Ruby packages).

    Seems like a slight non-story to me.

    -dale

  • "Do the Lin---ls rock!"

    See this blast from the past [linspire.com].

  • If someone is really planning on seriously web-developing anything, it shouldn't be an issue to set up a Linux development environment on their own. They might actually learn something about how stuff works in the process.

    RoR in general is weird like this -- yes, you might be able to "create a blogging application in 2 minutes" by calling some appropriate code-generation wizards, but does that really make you a developer who is able to actually do something on his own outside the scope of what is provided o

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