Every Flavour Beans

This is an adaptation to Ubuntu GNU/Linux platform of my previous post which was meant for the Windows platform: Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP

I can think of two different ways in which you might want to set up a development environment for Ruby on Rails on a GNU/Linux machine. One is to download everything outside of the package manager of your distribution i.e. build everything from the source. I am going to cover the second, easier way: how to setup Rails on a Debian/Ubuntu machine using its package manager for the most part. I show below how to setup Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, Mongrel, MySQL, and Subversion as part of the development stack.

1. Installing Ruby:

   If not already installed, install the build-essential package first:

   # sudo aptitude install build-essential

   Then install the Ruby and related packages:

   # sudo aptitude install ruby irb ri rdoc rake

2. Installing Rubygems

   Though it is possible to install Rubygems using the Ubuntu package manager, not only will you get an old version of rubygems if you do so, it also may not be compatible with the latest version of rails. I strongly recommend you download the source code package of the latest version of rubygems and install it using its setup script:

   # cd $HOME
   # wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/38646/rubygems-1.2.0.tgz
   # tar xvzf rubygems-1.2.0.tgz && cd rubygems-1.2.0
   # sudo ruby setup.rb

   Debian purists may frown at installing packages all over the system directories outside of control of the package manager. See Debian’s position on Rubygems. [via - RailsOnUbuntu]
   Remember to download the latest version of rubygems available(currently 1.2.0). You can remove the downloaded tgz archive and the extracted directory after the installation is finished.

   #cd $HOME
   # rm -r rubygems-1.2.0.tgz rubygems-1.2.0

   You can update the rubygems package by running the following command:

   # gem update ––system

3. Installing Rails

   The final step is to install the Rails gem package itself.

   # sudo gem install rails

   This will install the latest Rails version on your Ubuntu GNU/Linux. If you ever want to update Rails in the future, just run the following command:

   # sudo gem update rails

   You can update the other packages using Ubuntu’s package management tools(aptitude) since that is how you installed those packages in the first place.

The basic Rails development environment is now installed on your system and you can skip the rest of the post if you are happy with WEBrick as the web server, SQLite as the database server and your favourite text editor/IDE that may be already installed on your system. The following instructions cover installing an alternate web server called Mongrel; MySQL database server and its GUI tools; and Subversion.

4. Installing Mongrel

   Installing the Rails gem also installs the WEBrick web server which is ideally suited for development purposes. Another much recommended web server for Rails development as well as production environment is the Mongrel web server. To install the Mongrel web server, run the following gem command:

   # sudo aptitude install mongrel

   After installing Mongrel, Rails automatically starts the Mongrel instead of WEBrick web server when you run the Rails applications in development mode. (Refer to Mongrel documentation to know more about runing Rails applications under Mongrel in production mode.)

5. Installing MySQL

   This step covers the installation of MySQL database server and its GUI tools. Skip this step if you want to use some other database server. Run the following command to install the required mysql packages:

   # sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-admin mysql-query-browser

   One important step during the configuration process is to select a root password(you will need to enter it in the database.yml configuration file of your Rails application).

6. Installing Subversion

   Finally, install your favourite revision control software - CVS, Subversion, git etc. You can install subversion in this way:

   # sudo aptitude install subversion

Now you can create/checkout Rails applications, edit the files using your favourite text editor/IDE and run it under Mongrel. In future, I will try to write about developing Rails applications using integrated development environments like Eclipse and NetBeans.

There are different ways in which you might want to set up a complete development environment for Ruby on Rails on a Windows machine. I am going to cover how to setup Rails on a Windows machine using Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, Mongrel, MySQL, NetBeans and Subversion as part of the development stack. I will be using Windows Vista as the reference OS but most of the instructions work for Windows XP too.

1. Installing Ruby: Download and install the latest final version of the Ruby installer(currently 1.8.6) from the rubyforge.net website: One-Click Ruby Installer for Windows

   Leave all the default settings as they are and proceed with the installation wizard. It is important that you install Ruby in a path which doesn’t contain any spaces in it(the path c:\ruby selected in the wizard by default works fine).

   After the installation is complete, confirm that the ruby commands are added to the system path. Start the Command Prompt(Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt) and type the following command:

   C:\> ruby -v
   ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
   C:\> gem -v
   0.9.4

   If you get the “not recognized as an internal or external command” error, add the path to the ruby bin directory(e.g. c:\ruby\bin) to the system PATH environment variable(Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings).

2. Updating RubyGems:
   The above installer also installs RubyGems package and SciTE editor as part of the “one-click” installation process. Unfortunately though, the installed version of RubyGems may be a bit old(~0.9.4), so run the following command to update it to the latest available version(currently 1.1.1):
   C:\> gem update ––system
   C:\> gem -v
   1.1.1

   Note: Add “-p http://proxy:port” to all gem install commands if you are connecting to the Internet through a proxy.

3. Installing Rails:
   Now it is time to install the Rails package. Run the following command to install Rails as a ruby gem:
   C:\> gem install rails
   C:\> rails -v
   2.1.0

   In future, whenever you want to update Rails to a newer version, simply run the following command:

   C:\> gem update rails

The basic Rails development environment is now installed on your system and you can skip the rest of the post if you are happy with WEBrick as the web server, SQLite as the database server and SciTE as the editor(or your favourite text editor/IDE already installed on your system). The following instructions cover installing an alternate web server called Mongrel; MySQL database server and its GUI tools; NetBeans IDE, Subversion and their integration.

4. Installing Mongrel:
   Installing the Rails gem also installs the WEBrick web server which is ideally suited for development purposes. Another much recommended web server for Rails development as well as production environment is the Mongrel web server. To install the Mongrel web server, run the following gem command:
   C:\> gem install mongrel
   C:\> gem list mongrel

   *** LOCAL GEMS ***

   mongrel (1.1.5)

   After installing Mongrel, Rails automatically starts the Mongrel instead of WEBrick web server when you run the Rails applications in development mode. (Refer to Mongrel documentation to know more about runing Rails applications under Mongrel in production mode.)

5. Installing MySQL:
   This step covers the installation of MySQL database server and its GUI tools. Skip this step if you want to use some other database server.

   Download and install the MySQL 5 database server. You can safely accept all the default settings of the installation wizard. After MySQL database server is installed, you need to run its configuration wizard to configure the MySQL installation.

   • If you are a Windows XP user, run the configuration wizard directly from Start -> MySQL -> MySQL Server 5.0 -> MySQL Server Instance Config Wizard.
   • If you are a Windows Vista user, you first need to patch the configuration wizard before running it. Follow these instructions to patch the MySQL configuration executable using ResHack utility. Once that is done, you can run the configuration wizard from Start -> MySQL -> MySQL Server 5.0 -> MySQL Server Instance Config Wizard.

   One important step during the configuration process is to select a root password(you will need to enter it in the database.yml configuration file of your Rails application).

   Now download and install the MySQL GUI tools. This step can be skipped if you want to use mysql command line tools or if you prefer other GUI front-ends like HeidiSQL.

6. Installing Netbeans:
   You can use your favourite text editor or IDE to code your Rails application. Two of the most popular, Free Rails IDEs are NetBeans and Eclipse. NetBeans in particular has shown great improvement in its support for Ruby programming language and the Rails framework. I am going to cover configuring Netbeans for developing applications with Rails, so feel free to skip this step if you want to go with some other IDE(Aptana, IntelliJ IDEA etc.).

   Go to the download page of Netbeans IDE and download either the “Ruby” version(~29MB) or the “All” version(~219MB). (Ruby version supports only Ruby where as the All version supports Java, C++, etc. in addition to Ruby.)
   Install NetBeans. Run it. When creating a new Rails project in NetBeans, remember to select “Ruby” as the default instead of the default “JRuby” and then select Mongrel as the web server.
   

   For more information on developing Ruby on Rails applications using the NetBeans IDE, refer to the following links:

   • NetBeans IDE 6.1 Features (Ruby)
   • Netbeans THE best ruby on rails IDE

   There are many alternative IDEs that you can checkout, like Aptana Studio, Komodo, IntelliJ IDEA, etc.

7. Installing Subversion:
   Go to the Subversion download page, scroll down to the Windows section and click the “Win32 packages built against Apache 2.2″ link and download and install the ‘basic win32 binaries’ package.

   You can now work with the Rails applications stored in subversion repositories. You can also install and use TortoiseSVN which is a GUI subversion client that integrates very well with the Windows Explorer. I couldn’t find a way to integrated it with NetBeans though, so I install the subversion command line version to use with NetBeans even if I have TortoiseSVN installed on my system.

8. Configuring Subversion in NetBeans:
   Start the NetBeans IDE and go to Versioning -> Subversion -> Checkout. If you see a dialog box as shown in the screenshot below, it means subversion is properly installed and configured on your system. You can enter the repository details in the fields shown by the wizard, checkout a Rails application and work on it from the NetBeans IDE.

   

   (If you see an error instead, then you need to either add the subversion bin directory to the system PATH variable or enter the path in the shown NetBeans configuration window.)

   NetBeans has direct support for CVS, Subversion and Mercurial and NetBeans support for Git is currently under development.

Now you can create/checkout rails applications, edit them and run them under Mongrel from within the NetBeans IDE. One crucial item missing from this development environment is an alternative, more powerful automated build tool CruiseControl, which can also be integrated with NetBeans. Perhaps a topic for another post. In the next post I will explain how to create a basic “Hello World” application in Rails using the above development tools.

Couple of comments(by Mihail and Jonathan) on my earlier post about programming in Ruby using SciTE editor brought this to my notice: When using SciTE to develop Ruby programs on Windows platform, there are a few issues that one needs to be aware of.

1. To run the ruby interactive interpreter (or any other ruby command-line tool) from within SciTE editor on Windows, use full file name of the command, like irb.bat. If not already visible, open the output pane from View -> Output and type irb.bat in it. You should be dropped in the ruby shell; type 'exit' to exit the shell. You can any ruby command in this way, e.g. irb.bat, ri.bat. You can also run windows commands that are in the system path in the same way.
2. When you run a Ruby program either using Tools -> Go menu item or using F5 key command, SciTE spawns a shell process to run ruby.exe in it. This may result in a DOS box popping up when you run a ruby program. You never will have to deal with this DOS command window directly, if it comes in your way, just minimize it and go back to the SciTE editor. All the output will be visible in the output window(View -> Output if it is not visible) and any input needed by your Ruby program should also be entered in the same output window. To reduce such confusion, it is always a good practice to print a prompt string whenever reading input from the user; if such a prompt string shouldn't be a part of the interface, keep it anyway in the development version:
   Show Plain Text
   RUBY:

   1. print "Enter a number between 5 and 55:"; STDOUT.flush
   2. num = gets.to_i

Adding a Menu Entry to Invoke irb Command

If you use the Ruby interactive shell frequently and don't want to type seven characters each time you want to invoke it, then create a menu entry/keyboard shortcut for it. To do this, open the Ruby properties file by selecting Options -> Open ruby.properties menu item and search for Windows-specific settings(PLAT_WIN section).

Add the following lines in that section:

command.name.0.*.rb=irb
command.0.*.rb=irb.bat
command.is.filter.0.*.rb=1
command.0.subsystem.*.rb=1

Use another number in place of '0' if you have already bound it to something else. The first line(command.name.0) defines the name to be used in as the menu entry. The second line(command.0) defines the command to be invoked when this menu entry is selected. A value of '1' in the third line(command.is.filter.0) indicates to SciTE that the command may modify the contents of the current file(file is reloaded based on the value of load.on.activate setting).

The section in the properties file should look like this:

You can now invoke irb from Tools -> irb or by using Ctrl-0 key command. Note that this menu item will be visible only when editing .rb files. Ctrl-F6 will switch you between the file pane and the output pane.

What about GNU/Linux?

You can add a similar section in PLAT_GTK section if you are using SciTE on GNU/Linux platform, but use irb in the second line in place of irb.bat:

command.name.0.*.rb=irb
command.0.*.rb=irb
command.is.filter.0.*.rb=1
command.0.subsystem.*.rb=1

Add menu items to other frequently used commands in the same way(even links to help documents). For more information, refer to help document available from Help -> SciTE Help.

I know that the geeks amongst you would like to believe that only one text editor program exists in this world. Depending on which of the two groups you fall into, its either Emacs or Vi. Its a cool life for such people: they don't need to bother checking out the greatest and the latest of the development environments getting released in the market every day. Emacs and Vi always grow up to become the greatest editors soon after every technological innovation that takes place in the software world. They are stable, powerful, feature-rich, modular, customisable, extendable, ubiquitous and available in multiple flavours to suit the slightly different tastes even by the geek standards. The only downside of these two evergreen editors is the steep learning curve associated with them. But as with all great things, it more than pays off by the end.

In this article, we'll witness the support for the Ruby language present in the latest version of the Vim editor - Vim 7. If the latest version of Vim is not available on your preferred distribution(through its package manager, for example), then you can build it from the source, and install it in the user home directory if you don't want to mess up with the file organization of your package manager. Here is the procedure to install Vim 7.0 from the sources in the user's home directory. If you already have it installed, then skip to the next section.

1. Download the source package for Vim 7.0 editor.
2. Extract it in the home directory and 'cd' into it:
   sh# tar xvjf vim-7.0.tar.bz2
   sh# cd vim70
3. Install using the usual method for building from the source:
   sh# mkdir $HOME/vim7
   sh# ./configure --prefix=$HOME/vim7 --enable-rubyinterp
   sh# make && make install

   Make sure that you run the above commands as an unprivileged user(non-root) so that the generated files get proper file ownerships. (Run the above commands as root and drop the '--prefix' option to install it in system directories and make it available to all the users.)

4. Now you can run the editor by running the command './vim' from the ~/vim7/bin directory. The procedure to run the vi editor can be simplified using one of the following techniques:
   • Add the 'bin' directory of Vim installation(~/vim70/bin in our case) to $PATH variable in the user's profile(~/.bash_profile).
   • As root user, create links to all the executables present in ~/vim7/bin directory into the /usr/bin directory under different names(vim7, vimdiff7 etc so as not to conflict with the files from a possibly already existing Vim installation) and then run them from anywhere using these new names.
   • If you have installed it in the system directories, then of course you don't have to worry about all these settings and can directly run the editor using the 'vim' command from any directory.

Configuring Vim 7.0 For Ruby Support

The first step that we had taken to get Ruby support in the Vim editor was to compile it using the '--enable-rubyinterp' configure option. To get complete support for the Ruby programming language in the Vim editor, we need to add the following lines to the Vim configuration file .vimrc present in the home directory.
[Create it if it's not already there; an easy way to do this is to make a copy the sample vimrc file that comes with Vim 7.0, i.e.

Then add the following lines at the bottom of the .vimrc file]

set nocompatible
syntax on
filetype on
filetype indent on
filetype plugin on

Creating & Running Ruby Programs Using Vim 7.0

Now you are set to create your first Ruby program in the Vim editor.

Type the following program in the editor.

The editor should now look like this:

Apart from the neat syntax colouring that is visible in the picture, the Vim editor also does automatic code indentation and helps in code completion too. You can even run the programs from within the editor. Let us see how to access these features in Vim.

Add one more method(optional) to the 'Greeting' class that we had created earlier and name it something starting with 's'. I have added a function called 'stash()'. Go to the end of the Ruby program and type 'greet.s' and stop - don't complete the function name. If you press the key combination Ctrl-X Ctrl-O at this stage, Vim will pop-up a list of possible completions of the code that you have typed until now and lets you select one of those options. Below is a picture demonstrating the same.

To run the Ruby program from the Vim editor, let's first introduce a small mistake in it: change the code from 'Greeting.new' to 'Greeting.ne' and issue the following command in the vi command mode(presss the escape key and type the following line):

:rubyf ~/progs/ruby/greet.rb

You should see the following error message displayed at the bottom of the Vim screen.

Now go back to the program and remove the error that we had introduced and re-execute the program. You should see the output of the program as shown below.

For more help on the Ruby support in the Vim editor, issue the ":help ruby" command and scroll through the information displayed.

End Notes

The biggest advantage of developing Ruby programs using the Vim editor is that one gets all the powerful features of the vi editor which we have been using for years and have completely gotten used to. If you are searching for an easy to learn and easy to use programming editor, then perhaps you need to search elsewhere(see links below for some options) but if you are primarily a vi user, or don't mind investing some time initially to get used to this powerful editor, then the Ruby support available in it should make it an ideal choice for developing Ruby programs.

The JEdit editor today is among the most widely used programming editors. The editor has a very strong and committed developer & user community around it, which means an ever increasing number of features and its constantly improving stability. Today, it has enough number of features to compete with some of the best programming IDEs around. As is expected of a popular editor like JEdit, it has support for multiple programming languages(100+; eg: C++, Java, PHP, Ruby etc) and works on Windows, Mac OSX and GNU/Linux platforms. In this part of the "IDEs for Ruby Development" series, I discuss how to use JEdit editor to develop Ruby programs.
(Screenshots are taken in the GNU/Linux OS; same features are available on other platforms too.)

Download And Install JEdit Editor

Download the appropriate version of the JEdit package from the JEdit Download Page(the page also contains links to JEdit User Manual and JEdit Source Code).

JEdit depends on the Java Runtime Environment(JRE) to execute - make sure that Java is installed on your system before installing JEdit. Its straigh-forward to install JEdit on Windows and Mac OSX operating systems.

If you are a Gentoo user, the following command should download and install the latest version of JEdit available in the Gentoo portage tree:

On a Debian/Ubuntu system, add the following line to the '/etc/apt/sources.list' file:

deb http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jedit ./

Now running the following two commands will install the JEdit package:

(Use 'sudo' in front of all the commands if you are an Ubuntu user.)

You can use similar software package management tools to install JEdit on other GNU/Linux distributions(yum for Fedora, yast for SUSE etc) or install it using the RPM files. The application can be installed by building it from the source too.

Once the JEdit package is installed on your system, its time to install the plugin for the Ruby language.

Installing Ruby plugin for JEdit

Since the 0.8 version of the Ruby plugin for JEdit, it can be installed right from the JEdit editor. To install the plugin, start the JEdit editor, go to Plugins -> Plugin Manager menu, and click on the "Install" tab of the displayed dialog box. Wait for the dialog to fetch a list of all the plugins available for download and installation(you can view the list of plugins available for JEdit once it is downloaded and displayed in the dialog box, or you can also view a partial list of the plugins at the JEdit Quick Start page).

Once the table in the dialog box is filled with the available plugins, scroll down and search for the "RubyPlugin" entry and select it when found. Click "Install" to begin the download and installation process.

Develop Ruby Applications With JEdit

Once the plugin is installed, you are set to create Ruby applications in the JEdit editor environment. Some of the important feature that the Ruby plugin adds to the JEdit are code completion for methods, syntax error highlighting, automatic code indentation and integrated Ruby documentation. The plugin also adds the support to popup a window in which the user can browse the entire file structure of the Ruby program. The plugin is a work in progress and many more helpful features can be expected in the near future. RubyJedit.org website contains screenshots demonstrating some of the above mentioned features. Some more screenshots(related to integrated Ruby documentation in JEdit) follow.

JEdit is an excellent editor for editing programming code even without the Ruby plugin(Splitting and Docking Windows; Expanding and Collapsing Code Blocks); the plugin then adds sufficient Ruby specific functionality on top of it to make it one of the most feature-rich programming environments available today. For more ways to enhance the functionality of the JEdit editor, look at the other plugins available for installation in the Plugin Manager. The only downside of this editor is its sluggish behaviour especially when a lot of plugins are installed for it. Its load times become long and the general response afterwards won't be too fast either. But with limited number of plugins, its an excellent choice to develop Ruby applications.

In the next and the last part of this "IDEs for Ruby Development" series, I will discuss using the ever popular Emacs and Vim editors to develop Ruby applications.