I know this has been asked often over the years, looking for the
latest best practice…
I’m a total mac noob, have been using windows/cygwin up until now.
Looks like the basic approaches I’ve seen so far:
- Leave the pre-installed ruby 1.8.6 and just update the rails gem
- Do your own full blown installation (Hivelogic tutoral)
- Use Macports installation
- Others??
Mac has there own tutorial on the developer site, but it requires
using XCode and I want to use TextMate, so I haven’t paid much
attention to their instructions.
Advice greatly appreciated, thanks!
Brad
Brad A wrote:
I know this has been asked often over the years, looking for the
latest best practice…
I’m a total mac noob, have been using windows/cygwin up until now.
Welcome to the Mac community! Check out
Mac - Official Apple Support for some useful tips.
Looks like the basic approaches I’ve seen so far:
- Leave the pre-installed ruby 1.8.6 and just update the rails gem
That’s what I’d advise. There’s no reason to do it any other way that I
can see, unless you want to try Ruby EE.
[…]
Mac has there own tutorial on the developer site,
No. The company is called Apple. 
but it requires
using XCode and I want to use TextMate, so I haven’t paid much
attention to their instructions.
That’s a foolish reason to ignore it. A text editor is a text editor.
But before you blow €39 on TextMate, try jEdit (see
http://marnen.livejournal.com for setup info) and/or TextWrangler.
Best,
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]
Thanks for the input.
I actually used jEdit for a few years when I first started developing
in java, but have used Eclipse now for the last 3 or 4 years.
The main reason for choosing Textmate over XCode is that there seems
to be a lot of contributions from the rails community, as far as
snippets, etc, that should make some work more effcient.
I suppose the only real reason I have for not using the Ruby version
that is already available is that it’s 1.8.6 and my deployment
environment (my hosting service), uses 1.8.7. Not too sure if there
are any changes between versions that would be significant to me.
On Apr 17, 1:48 pm, Marnen Laibow-Koser <rails-mailing-l…@andreas-
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Brad [email protected] wrote:
I suppose the only real reason I have for not using the Ruby version
that is already available is that it’s 1.8.6 and my deployment
environment (my hosting service), uses 1.8.7. Not too sure if there
are any changes between versions that would be significant to me.
I would recommend getting VMWare or equivalent and re-creating
(as closely as possible) your deployment environment on a VM.
Then you can develop natively and test-deploy to your local Linux
(assuming!) instance for integration testing before pushing out to
production.
FWIW,
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]
Brad wrote:
I suppose the only real reason I have for not using the Ruby version
that is already available is that it’s 1.8.6 and my deployment
environment (my hosting service), uses 1.8.7. Not too sure if there
are any changes between versions that would be significant to me.
If that’s really a concern it’s not that hard at all to compile and use
your own Ruby of whatever version you like. There’s a good tutorial over
at Hivelogic. As for me I’m just using the pre-installed 1.8.6 version.
As for the comment earlier about “blowing” your money on TextMate, I am
in complete disagreement. That’s the best €39 I think I’ve ever spent on
software. I’ve used a lot of text editors and in my opinion nobody else
comes close. This is, of course, one man’s opinion. Your mileage may
vary.
Robert W. wrote:
[…]
As for the comment earlier about “blowing” your money on TextMate, I am
in complete disagreement. That’s the best €39 I think I’ve ever spent on
software.
Um, I meant “blow” in the sense of “spend irreversibly”, not in the
sense of “waste”. I know that TextMate is, by all reports, an excellent
program. However, I also know that a lot of Rails developers seem to
have tunnel vision when it comes to editors, so I just wanted to point
out a couple of free alternatives that the OP could evaluate. Sorry if
my choice of words was misleading.
I’ve used a lot of text editors and in my opinion nobody else
comes close. This is, of course, one man’s opinion. Your mileage may
vary.
Then I guess I should ask: in your opinion, what makes TextMate worth
the money?
Best,
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]
Not sure if this helps, but Dan from Thoughtbot has a great guide for
getting a decent Ruby dev environment set up on Mac OS X Leopard:
http://giantrobots.thoughtbot.com/2009/3/30/2009-rubyist-guide-mac-os-x-development-environment
I’m personally not that big on vim/vi, and I only use Git for tracking
some Gems, but there are certainly some benefits to this setup. Hope
this helps!
Thanks to everyone for their input.
I decided to just use the default install of ruby and upgrade the
rails gem, plus install mysql, http://bit.ly/Z1xJA. Still leaves open
using macports or a new complete install in the future.
I downloaded the 30 day trial of textmate and have started working
with it. I’ve seen some screencasts showing some great stuff for ruby/
rails. I’ll see if I can get some of that under my belt.
-Brad
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
Robert W. wrote:
[…]
As for the comment earlier about “blowing” your money on TextMate, I am
in complete disagreement. That’s the best €39 I think I’ve ever spent on
software.
Um, I meant “blow” in the sense of “spend irreversibly”, not in the
sense of “waste”. I know that TextMate is, by all reports, an excellent
program. However, I also know that a lot of Rails developers seem to
have tunnel vision when it comes to editors, so I just wanted to point
out a couple of free alternatives that the OP could evaluate. Sorry if
my choice of words was misleading.
Yea, maybe my comment sounded a bit more harsh than intended. I just
wanted to point out that there are sometimes compelling reasons to spend
money on good software when it can make you more efficient. That is as
opposed to using free software that just gets the job done.
Then I guess I should ask: in your opinion, what makes TextMate worth
the money?
In a word, “bundles.”
And, the longer form: TextMate gives me exactly what I want in a text
editor, which is a feature set designed to help enter code. I’m not
talking about assistance entering method names (as in code completion).
I really care very little about that. I’m talking about getting help
entering code without getting in my way all time with popup menus
suggesting things it “thinks” I might want to enter (and getting it
wrong about half the time).
Or, getting me stuck with a “beach ball” while it goes off trying to
figure out what I might want to enter next, as is the case with the Java
based IDE that I’m stuck with in my day job as a Java programmer.
All I can say is, download the 30 day trial of TextMate. Read the docs
and really get to know the editor. Chances are, if you’re like most of
use who have tried it, you’ll happily whip out that credit card to buy
your very own copy of this wonderful editor.
I know, I sound like a TextMate salesman, but really I’m just a happy
customer.