Ruby Rails For Mac Os X

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Setting up an advanced Ruby environment is quite an easy task. With the advent of latest technology sophistication, professional developers use installation guides to configure their working platform for Rails development in real-world by installing Ruby on Ubuntu, Windows, or on Mac OS X. Detailed up-to-date instructions help you install newest Rails release. The newest pre-release version is Rails 4.1.0.beta1 whereas Rails 4.0.2 is the stable current release.

Upgrade Your System to OS X Mavericks. Installing Ruby on Rails is simple, but unless you. I've just gone to installed RoR on my snow leopard mac. And found the rails gem was already installed. Does it need updating? Does this get installed along with textmate?

What is Ruby on Railsapps?

The RailsApps project offers sample applications which development professionals use as starter applications. Many developers use the apps and propose solutions of report problems as these arise. Rails frequently changes depending on how every application performs to serve as your personal “reference implementation” so that you can stay updated. Each application is accompanied by a tutorial to avoid any mystery code. Project support includes the example applications along with the Rails Composer tool, coming from the RailsApps tutorials to subscribers.

Ruby on Rails development with Windows

Developing Railsapps on Windows can be a daunting task. Installation of some gems that require native extensions may be difficult. For this reason, developers mostly use Ubuntu or Mac OS X to develop Railsapps.

Some choices for Windows include:

  • Install the railsdevbox or Railsbridge Virtual Machine
  • Try using the hosted development environment Nitrous.io
  • For Windows, use RailsInstaller as documented in Installing Railapps on Windows

Nitrous.io is ideal in case you have a speedy Internet connection. If not, railsdevbox or the Railsbridge Virtual Machine can be downloaded for a virtual Linux computer with Rails 4.0 and Ruby 2.0 using Vagrant. RailsInstaller being the last option is not recommended as it does not provide an updated version of Rails or Ruby. Ruby Version Manager (RVM) also does not run on Windows.

Railsapps Development with OS X

Mostly developers like to spend a little time to set up their workspace. If you have been experimenting on this environment the core criteria of your preferred setup can be as simple as follows:

  • Unobtrusive core files without any modification
  • Flexibility with Ruby versions as well as gem versions for each project
  • Minimum configuration
  • Easy to setup existing or new projects

These same ideals would certainly help Rails developers get started quickly. You can easily choose to upgrade to Mac OS X before installing Railsapps.

It comes pre-installed with a “system Ruby”. It includes the RVM having a known security vulnerability. For flexibility during development, the system Ruby should not be used. Instead, installation of Ruby can be done using the RVM. Before installing Ruby on Rails, you would need to prepare your computer by the installation of Apple’s Xcode Command Line Tools.

Railsapps Creation with Ubuntu Linux

To install Ruby on Ubuntu, package managers are available. For Ubuntu Linux, to install Railapps or RVM is the best option. The package managers may not be up to date always and hence you can use RVM instead. Often a JavaScript runtime is needed for Railsapps development on Ubuntu Linux, but it is not needed for Windows or OS X. For development on Ubuntu, the server-side JavaScript platform Node.js can be installed. For Rails development, Ubuntu is a popular environment like other Unix-based operating systems including OS X. Installation on this platform is widespread and relatively easy and the Rails developer community is well accustomed with its accessibility.

Hopefully, this article will be of great help to your own Ruby environment development. So, next time, for installing Railsapps, you can use any of these three methods that sounds most interesting to you. CodeLearn is also great as you can focus on learning to write code without dealing with installation issues.

We provide Rails Porting and Migration services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert Rails developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

This article explains why you should avoid using the version of Ruby bundled with Mac OS X and should instead install your own version of Ruby with RVM, the Ruby Version Manager.

Hands Off the System Ruby

Apple bundles the Ruby programming language with OS X. However, the main caveat for using the bundled version, called the system Ruby, is that Apple bundles Ruby for it’s own use. Therefore, it’s best not to make changes to the system Ruby.

You’ll know when you’re about to change the system Ruby when you need to prefix a gem installation with sudo, for example:

For

Another reason for not using the system Ruby is that it’s often several versions behind the latest stable version.

The Ruby Version Manager

A better alternative to using the system Ruby is to install Ruby with RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. RVM is a tool for installing different versions of Ruby itself. RVM has the following advantages:

  1. RVM enables you to install multiple versions of Ruby and allows you to change which version you want to use.
  2. RVM installs each version of Ruby in a hidden folder in your home folder so each version of Ruby you install doesn’t affect the system Ruby.
  3. Gems installed by RVM-managed versions of Ruby are installed within the hidden folder in your home folder containing that version of Ruby.
  4. You won’t need use sudo to install gems.

To check that you’re currently using the system Ruby, open Terminal and type the following:

If you’re using the system Ruby, OS X will respond with:

You can check which version of Ruby OS X is using with:

Installing RVM and Ruby

The RVM install page has comprehensive instructions for installing RVM that work on Mac OS X. I’ll provide the steps I used here.

The first step is to install the mpapis public key. However, as the install page notes, you might need gpg. Mac OS X doesn’t ship with gpg so before installing the public key, you’ll need to install gpg. I installed gpg with Homebrew:

After you’ve installed gpg, you can install the mpapis public key:

Ruby On Rails Mac Os X Install

I've listed the mapis public key install command here for illustration. You should use the version on the RVM install page.

I chose to install RVM with the latest stable version of Ruby, which at the time was 2.2.0:

After the installation completes, close the Terminal window and open a new one to make sure that Terminal picks up any environment changes.

Using RVM

You can list the versions of Ruby available to RVM with rvm list:

Mac

The rvm use command selects a version of Ruby:

You can check that you’re using an RVM-managed version of Ruby with:

OS X now responds with:

Ruby Rails For Mac Os X 10.10

Ruby rails for mac os x64

which tells us we’re using version 2.2.0 and that version 2.2.0 has been installed in my home folder away from the system Ruby. You can confirm this by asking Ruby itself with:

Mac Os X Download

The RVM-managed version of Ruby responds with:

Rails

As I mentioned earlier, gems installed with RVM-managed versions of Ruby are located with the Ruby. You can check where gems will be installed with:

Ruby Rails For Mac Os X64

The following lines of output shows that gems will be installed in the folder XXX.

Ruby Rails For Mac Os X 10.8

To find out where a particular gem is installed, use the gem which command. For example, gem which jekyll locates the Jekyll gem: