Radiant 0.6 RC1

After a hard day’s work the core team is pleased to announce the
immediate release of Radiant 0.6 RC1! Lots of changes have gone into
this release—too many to enumerate them all at this time of night.
Suffice it to say that the focus of this release has been the new
extension system. We’ll make sure there is a complete list of new
features when this becomes the official release, but for now we want to
submit it to you for feedback and testing.

To give it a whirl:

  1. Download the gem:
    http://johnwlong.com/downloads/radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem

  2. Install it using:
    $ gem install radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem

  3. Use the Radiant command to create a fresh project:
    $ radiant -d sqlite3 path/to/your/project

  4. Edit config/database.yml to taste.

  5. Run the new bootstrap rake task:
    $ cd path/to/your/project
    $ rake production db:bootstrap

  6. Configure and start it up on your favorite Web server:
    $ script/server -e production

One aspect of this new release that we would especially like feedback on
is that the new Radiant gem now contains it’s own copy of Rails. Since
we have been binding each release of Radiant to a specific Rails version
we thought it prudent to go ahead and package Rails with Radiant. This
has the side benefits of simplifying dependencies and making booting
easier.


John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com

John,
First, w00t! :slight_smile:

Second, I personally have been deleting the vendor/rails directory
since the release of Rails 1.2.1, so would prefer not to have the
rails directory, but agree it might simplify the install for newbies
on shared hosting (where they don’t have 1.2.1 yet).

Question:
Is there any difference in init/run time with a Rails app running
Rails from vendor/rails? I’d hope it was the same, but surely the
full gem install could cache more stuff?

Cheers,
Adam

Okay all! Sure you’re loving me by this point. I actually have something
constructive to say this time! :slight_smile:

First off: How to install to dreamhost

#1: Install personal rubygems as per
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/RubyGems

#2: Use the following to install some of the gems (Seems dreamhost gem
dependencies break occasionally)

gem install redcloth
gem install bluecloth
gem install radius

#3: Install radiant as previously mentioned

#4: Follow instructions to install radiant. Example command would be
like this:

radiant ~/ --ruby=/usr/bin/ruby

#5: Go into your .gems/cache folder and copy radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem to
radiant-0.6.0.gem (See below for comment)

#6: Go into your vendor directory on your webdir and unpack radiant (See
below for comment)

cd ~//vendor
gem unpack radiant

#7: Rename radiant-0.6.0 to radiant

#8: Change up your config/environment.rb to uncomment the line which
says ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] ||= ‘production’ – You may also need to add the
following line at the top:

ENV[‘RADIANT_ROOT’] = ‘//vendor/radiant’

#9: Finish up the database.yml and perform the rakes and such as
suggested by the radiant installer.

When you do go to launch the website the first time, be patient.
DreamHost’s FastCGI is tempermental and DreamHost’s autoprocess killer
may tank your fastcgi the first few times until it learns that it isn’t
hanging. If you want to help with the process, enter this into the
bottom of your dispatch.fcgi: (Provided from numerous sources.)

class RailsFCGIHandler
private
def frao_handler(signal)
dispatcher_log :info, “asked to terminate immediately”
dispatcher_log :info, “frao handler working its magic!”
restart_handler(signal)
end
alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

If you want to make sure it is dreamhost and the FastCGI implementation
being funny, go into public/.htaccess, uncomment

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

and go down and change the line which says:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

to

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]

If this works (It will be slow,) it is DreamHost’s proc killer being
strange. If you can’t get it launched the first time, do a

killall -9 dispatch.fcgi

a few times until it says theres no more processes named dispatch.fcgi,
and then try again. I know this is a bit of a mickey mouse workaround,
but until DreamHost catches on that the dispatch.fcgi isn’t evil
afterall, its what you have to do.

To show proof of working, go to http://test.bladedthoth.com

COMMENTS!

Okay, now that I’ve been using gems for a while and fighting with them,
I’ve come to find a few things that may help for the developers.
Problems that aren’t commonly seen but are showing up.

The gem being called radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem causes issues. gems still
apparently heavily relies on the file naming being dead-on to what it
needs. While it will install it, it gets itself confused on the process
of use. All the gems show up now EXCEPT for radiant in rails, because
it’s looking for radiant-0.6.0.gem and it doesn’t find it. This is part
of why custom installs of rubygems has a time with it. Something,
somewhere gets itself horridly confused and will not pick up the gems
properly when the instance of radiant can find itself for loading; You
get the error of ‘Can not find radiant-0.6.0’ even though when I write
up a script to list gems it shows it. Somehow the gempack process that
is being done works fine mostly, but for some reason some versions of
gem and the way they are set up have a hell of a time picking it up.

I hope this can help isolate the issue.

On 2/4/07, John W. Long [email protected] wrote:

  1. Download the gem:
    http://johnwlong.com/downloads/radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem

  2. Install it using:
    $ gem install radiant-0.6.0rc1.gem

John, the gem must be renamed to 0.6.0 because “rc1” is not a valid
versioning of rubygems.

Also, reverting from custom copy/upgrade script to generator based for
instance mode is the best solution (for finding identical files).

$ script/server -e production

One aspect of this new release that we would especially like feedback on
is that the new Radiant gem now contains it’s own copy of Rails. Since
we have been binding each release of Radiant to a specific Rails version
we thought it prudent to go ahead and package Rails with Radiant. This
has the side benefits of simplifying dependencies and making booting easier.

I agree on this, this simplifies deployment on servers, as long you
run multiple instances, if you start unpacking (gem unpack),
vendor/rails code duplication will stress your disks.

Great news Radiant Team!
Excellent work on the Extension system! :slight_smile:


Luis L.
Multimedia systems

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that
is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi

how do I install it on a shared host that doesn’t have the gem
installed? is there a way to freeze the gem to /vendor?

2007/2/6, John W. Long [email protected]:

Adam S. wrote:

Question:
Is there any difference in init/run time with a Rails app running
Rails from vendor/rails? I’d hope it was the same, but surely the
full gem install could cache more stuff?

It’s probably a little slower with RubyGems, but I haven’t run any
performance metrics on it.


John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com

Oliver B. wrote:

how do I install it on a shared host that doesn’t have the gem
installed? is there a way to freeze the gem to /vendor?

Eventually there will be. For now use the Radiant command on your local
box to extract the files that you need to run it in instance mode and
then use subversion to checkout the mental branch into /vendor/radiant.


John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com

On 2/8/07, Oliver B. [email protected] wrote:

how do I install it on a shared host that doesn’t have the gem
installed? is there a way to freeze the gem to /vendor?

You could ssh to your host, set GEM_PATH to some folder in your home
directory (~/.gems) and the install radiant gem.

Later just unpack it into the folder you want (prior chdir into that
folder).

$ gem unpack radiant

HTH,


Post: [email protected]
Search: http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/
Site: http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant


Luis L.
Multimedia systems

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that
is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi

If installing your own local RubyGems on DreamHost, shouldn’t you
install a local Ruby? or no?
I’ve personally struggled to get Radiant going on DH!!! Always a
BlueCloth dependency error. Says not installed. But it’s there, PATHs
are set. Since then, deleted all. Maybe I’ll try again.
Would be nice to have a full, detailed, step-by-step for DH and Radiant,
starting from nothing.

John J. wrote:

If installing your own local RubyGems on DreamHost, shouldn’t you
install a local Ruby? or no?
I’ve personally struggled to get Radiant going on DH!!! Always a
BlueCloth dependency error. Says not installed. But it’s there, PATHs
are set. Since then, deleted all. Maybe I’ll try again.
Would be nice to have a full, detailed, step-by-step for DH and Radiant,
starting from nothing.

I’m not having any trouble running Radiant on DreamHost. But I think
I’m running in application mode, not instance mode. All I had to do was
get latest of Mental and upload it to my host. (make sure fastcgi is
turned on) Then create a symbolic link from http to the public
directory in radiant. Then everything except the database should be
working. If you’re still having problems, try messaging “igotimac” on
irc.freenode.net#radiantcms

John J. wrote:

If installing your own local RubyGems on DreamHost, shouldn’t you
install a local Ruby? or no?
I’ve personally struggled to get Radiant going on DH!!! Always a
BlueCloth dependency error. Says not installed. But it’s there, PATHs
are set. Since then, deleted all. Maybe I’ll try again.
Would be nice to have a full, detailed, step-by-step for DH and Radiant,
starting from nothing.

Take a look at
http://www.bladedthoth.com/news/2007/02/04/installing-radiant-0-6-0-rc1-on-dreamhost/
and try those steps out. I run my site on DreamHost. RC1 is a lot easier
than 0.5.2 to get running at least.

If you still have problems with bluecloth being detected, you have a few
options. Easiest may be going into /vendor and typing

gem unpack bluecloth

then change the name of the directory made to ‘bluecloth’ (without the
''s) - the directory will usually pop up as ‘bluecloth-<#>.<#>.<#>’, so
easiest way would be something like this:

mv bluecloth* bluecloth

Let me know if you need more help or if my steps work well.

On 2/19/07, Oliver B. [email protected] wrote:

Check that public/dispatch.cgi or .fcgi uses the correct shebang! line
for dreamhost:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Ruby_on_Rails

Also check the .htaccess rewrite rules (that point to fcgi instead of
.cgi).


Luis L.
Multimedia systems

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that
is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi

hello again,
so followed the suggestion to install my own rubygems and then install
the radiant gem.
got everything going, on webrick the admin came up fine. but when I
tried to use dreamhost’s standard apache/fcgi, the application didn’t
start, getting the application error “Rails application failed to
start properly” and nothing on the logs.

i then tried running it on cgi, but got the same problem. what could
be causing this?

2007/2/19, Andrew K. [email protected]:

Hi Luis,

Check that public/dispatch.cgi or .fcgi uses the correct shebang! line
for dreamhost:

I did, tried both
#!/usr/bin/ruby
and
#!/usr/bin/ruby1.8
and even
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

also double checked permissions, got 755 on /public and all the dispatch
files

Also check the .htaccess rewrite rules (that point to fcgi instead of .cgi).

I did, here’s what I have:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

I doubled checked everything on that wiki entry, I believe :stuck_out_tongue:

tried to use dreamhost’s standard apache/fcgi, the application didn’t
start, getting the application error “Rails application failed to
start properly” and nothing on the logs.

What do your logs say?

Check both the standard Dreamhost-provided log directory as well as
radiant logs.

the radiant/rails logs are empty, and dreamhost one has this:

FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server
“/path/to/app/public/dispatch.fcgi”

2007/2/19, Jacob B. [email protected]:

still getting the problem, but I’m managing to use radiant with
webrick for now. it’s working fine, with the asset manager extension.

another question, unrelated: how do I change the header text on the
admin interface? is it possible to edit it as to have my client’s
company’s name instead?

many thanks,
Oliver

2007/2/19, Oliver B. [email protected]:

another question, unrelated: how do I change the header text on the
admin interface? is it possible to edit it as to have my client’s
company’s name instead?

Unless I am thinking of something else you are, go ahead and check out
the “config” database table.

On 2/19/07, Oliver B. [email protected] wrote:

2007/2/19, Oliver B. [email protected]:

Radiant mailing list


Alexander H.
http://www2.truman.edu/~ah428