# Beginner Q: Keeping the Ruby on Rails platform up to date

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/beginner-q-keeping-the-ruby-on-rails-platform-up-to-date/84422>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 4, 2007, 8:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/beginner-q-keeping-the-ruby-on-rails-platform-up-to-date/84422 "2007-02-04T08:09:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/c4cdca/32.png) [@Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Kristen)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 8:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/beginner-q-keeping-the-ruby-on-rails-platform-up-to-date/84422/1 "2007-02-04T08:09:01Z")

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Hello, I recently installed the ruby on rails framework from this  
tutorial:

> **[Dan Benjamin](https://danbenjamin.com)**
>
> Dan Benjamin's personal website.

So, I installed:

Ruby on Rails 1.1  
Ruby 1.8.4  
LightTPD 1.4.13  
FastCGI 2.4.0  
RubyGems 0.9.0  
Readline 5.1  
PCRE 6.6  
FastCGI and MySQL bindings

I figured out how to keep my ruby on rails up to date by using the  
command “gem update rails --include-dependencies”, but what about all  
the other stuff? Should I keep checking their website to see if updates  
are available and then compiling, installiing them? Or is there a  
quicker command line way to keep all the stuff up to date? Maybe a  
similar command like the one ruby on rails has.

Also, any other tips regarding the maintanance of Ruby on Rails would be  
much appricated!

Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/c4cdca/32.png) [@Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Kristen)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 11:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/beginner-q-keeping-the-ruby-on-rails-platform-up-to-date/84422/2 "2007-02-04T11:45:12Z")

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Hi Kristen,

If you _really_ need to keep up to date, maybe you should install  
everything using MacPorts[1]

There is an article[2] describing how to ‘sandbox’ Rails with MacPort  
in order to have multiple version of your pre-requisites installed.  
The update process after that is pretty much a simple command, ‘sudo  
port upgrade installed’.

You can do many more things with MacPorts, but you will be hard  
pressed to find documentation for it. Here[3] is the manual from when  
it was called DarwinPorts.

[1] [http://www.macports.org](http://www.macports.org)  
[2] [http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/04/sandboxing\_rail.html](http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/04/sandboxing_rail.html)  
[3] [http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/docs/ch01s04.html](http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/docs/ch01s04.html)

-christos

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/c4cdca/32.png) [@Kristen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Kristen)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 8:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/beginner-q-keeping-the-ruby-on-rails-platform-up-to-date/84422/3 "2007-02-04T20:45:32Z")

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Christos Z. wrote:

> [1] [http://www.macports.org](http://www.macports.org)  
> [2] [http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/04/sandboxing\_rail.html](http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/04/sandboxing_rail.html)  
> [3] [http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/docs/ch01s04.html](http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/docs/ch01s04.html)
> 
> -christos

Thank you very much, I’ll take a look at those links.