Ultimate Ruby on Rails Setup and Tutorial Help

[covertsurfer]

Hi!

I want to start learning Ruby on Rails using my iMac (Leopard 10.5.5).

I have seen various articles saying you can use the built in version while others use MacPorts.

I am a complete novice when it comes to UNIX terminal stuff but am not afraid to use it.

I don't know what program to use as an editor although I have seen Textmate recommended. What about Coda?

I'd prefer to use MySQL.

What I would like is an ultimate guide on how to set up my development environment (whether it be using ROR built in or MacPorts) and then some tutorials on how to get started using the latest Ruby On Rails. All articles I've seen are for ROR 1.8.

As I've said, I am a complete beginner using ruby, UNIX etc but am not afraid to learn.

Hopefully this could be passed on to other people interested in learning.

Thanks

 

[rogersmj]

I work with Rails all day, every day. I have used Locomotive, the built-in Leopard Rails, and MacPorts.

These days, I recommend MacPorts. It's ridiculously easy to get setup and -- most importantly -- up-to-date. Whenever you need a new package (like I just needed to get rmagick setup), it's a simple single command most of the time. You can install MySQL through MacPorts as well. It keeps all your development resources maintained by a single system, and after several years of doing it the *other* way, I strongly recommend MacPorts.

As for an editor, I recommend TextMate. There are built-in triggers for pretty much everything, plus the ability to define your own are fantastic. For example, I define my own "a" trigger -- I type "a" then hit the Tab key in an HTML/RHTML document, and it automatically expands to a full HTML tag with title, href, etc. It's got great shortcuts for Rails like Ctrl+Shift+. which generate Ruby output tags that I don't know how I can live without. TextMate + FireFox with the FireBug extension should be all you ever need.

We have a tutorial we follow at work when setting up a new machine with MacPorts + Rails + MySQL. I'll go find it.

EDIT: This here is a good guide: http://blog.openrain.com/2008/08/20/setup-ruby-and-rails-on-osx/

 

[The Past]

EDIT: This here is a good guide: http://blog.openrain.com/2008/08/20/setup-ruby-and-rails-on-osx/

Thanks mrrogers.

 

[covertsurfer]

Thanks!

All set up, just need some beginners tutorials

 

[Cromulent]

Thanks!

All set up, just need some beginners tutorials

Remember in order to understand Ruby on Rails you need to learn the language Ruby first otherwise you'll miss most of what is going on.

Therefore concentrate on Ruby, then look into the Ruby on Rails framework once you have the language itself mastered.

 

[covertsurfer]

Good advice.

Please add to the thread of any ruby beginners guide and how to develop ruby applications on OS X.

 

[covertsurfer]

Well there aren't as many replies as I hoped.

I have got my environment all set up thanks to mrogers but still haven't found a good tutorial that explains everything and guides you through it. I started following Apple's own guide but then realised half way through it was not for ROR 2.1 so I deleted everything as there were all sorts of errors.

I am now back at the beginning again.

Anyone have links to good comprehensive 2.1 tutorials?

Thanks

 

[Cromulent]

As I said you should be concentrating on Ruby guides. Try something like:

http://www.rubycentral.com/book/

 

[covertsurfer]

Thanks for the link but lets now say its 6 months on and I want to learn Ruby on Rails.

 

[Cromulent]

As I've said, I am a complete beginner using ruby, UNIX etc but am not afraid to learn.

From your original post.

If that is true you really should begin with that book. Forget about RoR for the time being.

Jumping into RoR now would be akin to trying to learn maths without knowing how to count.

 

[Kaliemon]

A good place to checkout is Railscasts for really helpful screen casts.

Also, for an editor TextMate is great, but the new NetBeans 6.5 has incredible support for RoR, it has a well documented collection of functions and rake tasks as well as other scripts such as generate, scaffold, etc. I use both depending on what I am going to do. NetBeans is great to start a new project and for the initial development, but when it comes to just making a quick adjustments TextMate is faster.

If you get to the point where you need version control like SVN or Mercurial, Netbeans also has that fully built in.

NetBeans.org also has some tutorials about RoR.