Installing eRuby/Erubis to use with Apache on Mac OS X

Ruby
1

So I’m pretty new to Ruby and I really like the idea of it and the
syntax and all of that joy. But I’m having trouble getting up and
running. I got Ruby 1.8.6 installed thanks to

That was easy. But I did a lot I didn’t exactly understand what I was
doing, to give you an idea of where I’m at.

I want to get eruby or erubis working with my local dev apache
install. This is not the install that came with OS X, but with using
MAMP (www.mamp.info). It’s what I use for all of my development in
PHP, which I have been doing for several years now, though not all on
my shiny new mac. So here are my questions:

  1. What do I need to do to get eRuby or Erubis working with Apache?
  2. Since I will be eventually moving what I write to a shared hosting
    solution, would there be any compatibility dangers of using Erubis?
  3. How common is it for shared hosting solutions to have eRuby or
    compatible setup or how hard is it get them to do that?
  4. Is there anything I should know about developing web apps in Ruby
    when coming from PHP?

Also, I’m not interested in Rails yet. I want to learn Ruby first and
go from there.

I’ve already searched high and low for these answers without much
luck, only small clues. I hope I’m not being terribly annoying asking
this seemingly basic questions.

Any help is greatly appreciated.