Every Flavour Beans

Setting Up Ruby on Rails Projects with Git and Github

1170 days

by tabrez in General

Git is the favourite source code management tool of the Ruby on Rails community these days. Though GNU/Linux or Mac platforms are generally preferred to Windows by Ruby on Rails as well as git communities, I will show you how you can work with these technologies on Windows platform. I will also show how to host a git public/share repository of a Rails application on the Github free web service. Note that the following information applies to any project, not just Rails.

Refer to my earlier post to see how to install Ruby on Rails on the Windows platform. You can skip some of the later parts if you wish.
Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP
Git still has some issues on the Windows platform but for normal usage the msysgit package shouldn’t let you down. Download and install it from its Google Code page.
Download msysgit for Windows

Read the information in last few dialog boxes carefully during the installation and select the settings you prefer. The following screenshots show the settings I have picked when installing msysgit on my system.

Install a separate git shell in which to run the git commands:

I can go to any git initialized directory, right-click a file and say “Git Bash Here” which will save me a lot of ‘cd’ commands:

Git’s built-in SSH support is more than enough for development purposes:

Now you can just go to any Rails directory and run ‘git init’ there to track the files under git.

Start Git Bash shell from the Start Menu.

Go to your Rails directory and run the following commands.

Example session:

# cd hello
# ls
# git init
# git add .

For more git commands that you can use, refer to Git Tutorial. To learn more about how Git handles line ending conversions(especially important to Windows users), refer to gitattributes man page.
If you are working alone on a particular application or you are just interested in maintaining the history of the source code changes locally, then you might prefer just working with in the project directory. If I want to share the changes with friends/colleagues or the world at large, we need a public git repository. Github and Assembla are but only two examples that have good free packages to get started with.
Create a new account on Github.
- Go to github.com
- Click the link “Pricing and Signup” at the top of the page.
- Pick a package(say “Open source” which is free) and click “Signup” button.
- Fill in the information and click “I agree, sign me up!” button if you agree to all the policies.
You need to enter your public SSH key when creating a Github account. If you don’t already have SSH keys generated, you can generate one using git tools. Github website has nice explanation on how to go about setting up SSH key on Windows for Github, so just follow the procedure.

Once you have created the account and are logged in, click the “Create new one” link on the dashboard page, fill in the details and click the “Create Repository” button to create an empty repository on Github.

Now you can push the contents of your Rails directory to the empty git repository that we created on Github in the previous step by running the following command in Git Bash shell:

# cd hello
# git remote add origin g...@github.com:tabrez/hello.git
# git push origin master

Adjust the second command according to your account/project details. Now you can say ‘git push’ from your git tracked directory anytime you want to publish your changes to Github, so that others can pull these changes to their computers and merge them with their local git repository.

Read more about git push.
Read more about Github.

I will try to write about more tools that help in being more productive with development with Rails in future articles.

Installing Sun Java SE 6, Maven 2 and Tomcat 5.5 on Fedora GNU/Linux

1235 days

by tabrez in Java, Struts 2

For using most of the enterprise technologies based on Java, you generally need at least the following components installed and configured on your system:

Sun Java SE (or EE) SDK
A command line build tool like Ant or Maven
A Java application server/container like Tomcat, Jetty, Glassfish, JBoss etc.

Based on which Java based technology/framework you want to use, you may need to install further dependencies. Even though you may not need all the three components mentioned above to be able to work with all Java technologies, I found myself installing them way too many times when compared to any other Java component that I wanted a place to document the installation process of these three components specifically, if only to refer to this post from other Java tutorials in future.

Installing OpenJDK/Sun Java SE 6, Apache Maven 2 and Tomcat 5 on Fedora GNU/Linux

Installing Java SE 6
You can’t install Sun’s JDK directly from the Fedora repositories, you have the following two choices:

Use OpenJDK that comes installed by default in Fedora 9(if not, you can install it with a simple ‘yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk’ command; or first search for the exact package name using ‘yum search jdk’). If you want to go with Fedora’s OpenJDK then you don’t have to do anything else, except perhaps set JAVA_HOME environment variable to OpenJDK installation path in your profile file.
Install Sun’s latest JDK by manually downloading the binaries from Sun’s website. If you are very specific about using Sun’s official JDK only, then you first have to un-install OpenJDK that is installed by default in Fedora 9. Then you need to download Sun’s JDK and run the installer. (Download the Java EE SDK if you want to install the enterprise edition.) Assuming you have downloaded Sun JDK binary and saved it in your home directory under a name like jdk-6u7-linux-i586.bin, run the following commands to complete the installation:
# yum remove java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
# yum install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296
# cd ~ & chmod +x jdk-6u7-linux-i586.bin
# ./jdk-6u7-linux-i586.bin
# javac -version
javac 1.6.0_07

As a final step, add the following line to your profile file(e.g. .bash_profile) to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the path where you have installed Sun JDK:

export JAVA_HOME /opt/jre/jdk

Make JAVA_HOME point to OpenJDK installation path if you are using OpenJDK.

Installing Apache Maven2
Apache Maven 2 can be installed using yum command:

# yum install maven2
# mvn ––version
Maven version 2.0.4
# yum remove maven2

Installing Maven 2 on Fedora 9 using the yum package manager gave me the old 2.0.4 version, so I removed it and decided to install Maven manually. To manually download and extract Maven 2 archive on Fedora 9, follow these instructions:

Download the latest stable version of Apache Maven 2 archive from its download page.
Extract it to your home directory and rename the directory to ‘maven2′
# tar xjvf apache-maven-2.0.9-bin.tar.bz2
# mv apache-maven-2.0.9-bin maven2
Add the following line to your profile file(e.g. .bash_profile or /etc/profile) to set maven2 executables in system path:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/maven2/bin
Confirm if Maven 2 is installed and configured correctly:
# source .bash_profile
# mvn ––version
Maven version 2.0.9
Java version 1.5.0

Installing Tomcat 5 and Jetty
You can finally install tomcat and jetty servers using yum command:

# yum install tomcat5 jetty

The installation procedure on other GNU/Linux distributions should be on similar lines using their respective package managers and I will try to post the procedure for Ubuntu, Gentoo, openSuse and Mandriva distributions in the near future.

Testing the installation

To test the above installation, see my next post(to be published), “Hello, World” Java Web Application using Java SE 6 + Tomcat 5.5 + Maven 2.”

Installing amazon-ecs/hpricot RubyGem on Windows Operating System

1255 days

by tabrez in Ruby/Rails

Installing rubygems that come with native extensions is not same on gnu/linux and Windows platforms as I have discovered recently. Apparently, it is important that the native extensions needed by the rubygem be built with the same compiler tool chain as your main ruby installation. The rubygem I needed to install was amazon-ecs and it depends on another rubygem called hpricot which comes with native extensions. Though hpricot installed fine on gnu/linux OS, I recieved the following errors on Windows:

C:\Users\tabrez> gem install hpricot
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org/
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing hpricot:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

c:/ruby/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb install hpricot
checking for stdio.h… no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
details. You may need configuration options.

Gem files will remain installed in c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6.161 for inspection.
Results logged to c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6.161/ext/fast_xs/gem_make.out
C:\Users\tabrez>

Help on the IRC channel and some searching on the Internet provided me with the following solution: use whytheluckystiff’s repository as the source to install hpricot rubygem. Once hpricot rubygem was installed, amazon-ecs rubygem installed with no problems.

C:\Users\tabrez> gem install hpricot ––source http://code.whytheluckystiff.net
Successfully installed hpricot-0.6-x86-mswin32
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for hpricot-0.6-x86-mswin32…
Installing RDoc documentation for hpricot-0.6-x86-mswin32…

C:\Users\tabrez> gem install amazon-ecs
Successfully installed amazon-ecs-0.5.3
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for amazon-ecs-0.5.3…
Installing RDoc documentation for amazon-ecs-0.5.3…
C:\Users\tabrez>

The same source works for sandbox rubygem too.

References:

“Hello, World” Web Application in Ruby on Rails using Aptana Studio

1264 days

by tabrez in Eclipse, Ruby/Rails

I am assuming that you have everything properly setup on your computer for developing applications with the Ruby on Rails framework using Aptana Studio IDE. If not, see my previous posts:

In this post I will take you through a screenshot guided tour of the Aptana Studio (RadRails) IDE and show you how to develop a blank web application using Ruby on Rails framework and add a simple scaffold to it(“Hello, World” equivalent for Rails framework). So let’s get started.

When you run the Aptana Studio application, you will see the splash screen as shown below:

To create a new Ruby on Rails project, go to File -> New -> Project… and select Rails Project from the “Rails” folder(expand it if necessary). Enter a name for the project(say “Demo1″) and click Finish.

The main window should look like the following screenshot(click to see larger version).

Below you can see the screenshots of various sections of the main window shown above:

The Project pane on the left:

The Console window at the bottom:

The Scripts window at the right(you can access the same from the “Scripts” menu too):

The Cheat Sheets window at the extreme right:

If you click the “Click to Begin” link in the cheatsheet window(shown above), you will see the following “Dynamuc Help” window with links to various Rails help topics:

Aptana Studio supports the following views that you can enable, for example to view API documentation, try out some regular expressions etc.:

At the bottom, you can click on RubyGems tab to see a list of Ruby gems:

You might be prompted to install some Ruby gems by Aptana Studio(you can install or ignore them):

RailsPlugins tab will show you the Rails plugins that you can install with a few simple mouse clicks:

RakeTasks tab allows you to perform various rake tasks by selecting the one you want from the drop-down box:

Generators tab similarly allows you to generate a scaffold, model, controller, view etc. by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down box:

Creating a Blank Rails Web Application using Aptana Studio

Let us put the Generators tab to use. Select “Scaffold” from the “Generator” dropdown box, enter the parameters as shown in the screenshot below and press the “Go” button.

You should see the following output in the Console tab.

You should be able to see the following migration file generated in the project directory:

And here is a screenshot showing the contents of the generated migration file:

If you now run the rake tasks “db:create:all” and “db:migrate” you should be able to see the output of commands executed in the console window:

Now run the application. You should see the following output in the internal web browser of Aptana Studio:

Click on the “New Book” link and you will see the new book form like this:

You can go back to your Rails project, make edits, generate more scaffolds, models, controllers and views and test your changes in the internal browser of Aptana Studio. And so on and so forth.

Aptana Studio IDE with RadRails plugins provides one of the richest web application development environments for Ruby on Rails framework. NetBeans 6.1, emacs/vim, IntelliJ IDEA are pretty good too and all of these are multi-platform, so why bother with Mac-only solution like Textmate? ;)

Setting Up Rails Development Environment using Aptana Studio

1267 days

by tabrez in Ruby/Rails

You first need to complete the first five steps of my earlier post “Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP” which explain how to install Ruby, RubyGems, Ruby on Rails, Mongrel web server and MySQL database server on Microsoft Winodws Vista/XP. You can skip the last two steps(sixth and seventh) of that post which describe how to setup NetBeans 6.1 IDE for development with the Rails framework; continue with this post instead which explains how to setup the Eclipse-based IDE Aptana Studio for developing web applications using the Ruby on Rails framework.

Download and Install Aptana Studio and RadRails plugin

Download Aptana Studio IDE, run the installer and install it on your computer(or simply extract it if you downloaded the zip file).
Run Aptana Studio. In the main window, you should see the start page of Aptana Studio(for some reason if you don’t, go to Help -> Aptana Studio Start Page…). Here you will see options to install various plugins for Aptana Studio like PHP plugin, Ruby on Rails plugin, Adobe AIR plugin etc. Click the “Install” button in the “Ruby on Rails” section.
Select Aptana RadRails checkbox and select all the available optional features available for it.

I recommend that you leave the selected default location for installation as it is and proceed with the installation.

Once the RadRails plugin is installed, it is time to configure Ruby installation in Aptana Studio. If you haven’t installed Ruby and Ruby on Rails yet, see my previous post.

Configure Ruby/Rails in Aptana Studio

If Ruby is installed in a location like “C:\ruby”, Aptana will automatically find the path and configure the Rails environment so you don’t have to worry about anything. If you have installed Ruby in a non-standard path where Aptana could not find it, then you need to set the path manually. To do so, go to Windows -> Preferences, expand the Ruby node in the left pane and select the Installed Interpreters item.
Click the Add button and enter the details about your Ruby installation directory. Paths to all the other Ruby tools(e.g. rake, rails etc.) will be picked up automatically from this setting.

That’s all we need to do to get Ruby on Rails framework configured with Aptana Studio IDE. We can now create new project and check out if everything is working properly. I have made a separate post to show how to create a basic Ruby on Rails web project in Aptana Studio and run it with the help of a lot of screenshots to introduce you to the most important features of the Aptana RadRails IDE for Rails based development, so check that out for more details.

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