[Ruby Appliance] Status update

[Phillip Gawlowski]

A (very slightly edited) post can be found on my blog, too. [0]


==============cut at line====================================

A few days before New Years, I posted how neat it'd be if we had a Ruby
Appliance. This, and the mail to the ruby-talk mailing list has resulted
in a couple of results already.

For one, we found a name: Ruby Zen, which fits quite well, and is
appropriately Web 2.0 without being unintelligible. ;-)

For another: rubyzen.org has been registered, and we are feverishly
working on getting the website up and some content, too.

We are also working on evaluating Linux distros, with Gentoo, Turnkey
Linux, and Ubuntu being hot candidates for the appliance's operating system.

We've also decided to focus on Ruby 1.9.1.

The guys over at gemcutter.org were so kind to provide me with a quick
dump of the top 100 hottest gems, so we can pick some great gems to
start with.

Unfortunately, this is happening behind closed doors of sorts, since, at
the moment, we are using Google Wave which is still closed to the
general public. However, if you leave me a comment here, we can organize
a handful Wave invites for certain! (I still got 5 or 6 left from the
first batch alone.)

So, what else?

Future plans!

In the short term:

* Get a website up for easy contribution (and to move the
development process in the public, where it belongs, it's done by the
community for the community, after all)
* Have a prototype VM ready in a couple of days
* Get more contributors. You can help if: You can test a virtual
machine, read proposals and comment on them (provide a reality check!
Always good!), write a tutorial (maybe for your favorite gem, or Ruby
feature)
* Got TikiWiki experience? I'd be glad to hear from you, if you
could lend a hand in implementing features (like an issue tracker, or
user wiki page).

So, yeah, the Ruby Appliance isn't forgotten. Considering that this was
between the years we did get quite a bit done yet. Thanks to every one
(on my blog or on Ruby Talk) who contributed already.

[0]
http://blog.thimian.com/2010/01/03/status-update-on-ruby-zen-ruby-appliance-remember/

 

[Brian Candler]

It would be interesting if you have a clean upgrade solution: that is, I
would like to be able to upgrade the appliance to a completely fresh VM
image without losing my local changes. (Perhaps using an overlay
filesystem, e.g. unionfs)

If the image has to be maintained using the normal OS mechanisms -
apt-get update or whatever - then I don't think I'd be interested. There
are plenty of existing mechanisms for bootstrapping a VM image.

Also, it would need to be ruby 1.8 for me.

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

It would be interesting if you have a clean upgrade solution: that is, I
would like to be able to upgrade the appliance to a completely fresh VM
image without losing my local changes. (Perhaps using an overlay
filesystem, e.g. unionfs)

I'll include that in our not-quite-ready-for-the-public-yet wiki as
development goal for the VM.

If the image has to be maintained using the normal OS mechanisms -
apt-get update or whatever - then I don't think I'd be interested. There
are plenty of existing mechanisms for bootstrapping a VM image.

Could you clarify this: do you mean the OS within the Virtual Machine,
or updating the VM image?

Also, it would need to be ruby 1.8 for me.

Then the VM is, out of the box, not for you, I'm afraid.

Maybe http://www.turnkeylinux.org/rails this is more something for you,
even though it is aimed at Rails development by default.

 

[Aldric Giacomoni]

It would be interesting if you have a clean upgrade solution: that is, I
would like to be able to upgrade the appliance to a completely fresh VM
image without losing my local changes. (Perhaps using an overlay
filesystem, e.g. unionfs)

If the image has to be maintained using the normal OS mechanisms -
apt-get update or whatever - then I don't think I'd be interested. There
are plenty of existing mechanisms for bootstrapping a VM image.

Also, it would need to be ruby 1.8 for me.

I would note that Phillip's original purpose for this VM is actually for
Ruby beginners or people who wish to learn Ruby. Depending on
Vision(tm), a VM for experienced Ruby Devs would probably be an
altogether different beast: one for which your requirements are quite
reasonable

 

[Brian Candler]

Could you clarify this: do you mean the OS within the Virtual Machine,
or updating the VM image?

Everything within the VM image: the O/S, the ruby version, the gems,
everything it provides which is not stuff I added myself.

If this is going to be a pre-built Ubuntu image with ruby and a bunch of
gems installed, then I could just use debootstrap or ubuntu-vm-builder
to prepare it, and apt-get update (or unattended-upgrades) would keep it
up to date.

OTOH, if this is a teaching tool, then upgrading is not really a big
deal. When it becomes stale, the user can throw it away and get a fresh
one.

Perhaps your focus is on people who don't already have a Linux distro on
their desktop, but who are able to install something like vmware-player
to run the image? If so, then I misunderstood the aim. When I read ruby
VM, I was thinking of people running datacentres who want an easy way to
install and maintain many Ruby application servers.

 

[Walton Hoops]

Everything within the VM image: the O/S, the ruby version, the gems,
everything it provides which is not stuff I added myself.

If this is going to be a pre-built Ubuntu image with ruby and a bunch of
gems installed, then I could just use debootstrap or ubuntu-vm-builder
to prepare it, and apt-get update (or unattended-upgrades) would keep it
up to date.

OTOH, if this is a teaching tool, then upgrading is not really a big
deal. When it becomes stale, the user can throw it away and get a fresh
one.

Perhaps your focus is on people who don't already have a Linux distro on
their desktop, but who are able to install something like vmware-player
to run the image? If so, then I misunderstood the aim. When I read ruby
VM, I was thinking of people running datacentres who want an easy way to
install and maintain many Ruby application servers.

A teaching tool is exactly what this is aimed at. While we have talked
about developer-centric VMs also, it's not the primary focus atm.

 

[Roger Pack]

A few days before New Years, I posted how neat it'd be if we had a Ruby

Appliance. This, and the mail to the ruby-talk mailing list has resulted
in a couple of results already.

A few additional suggestions:
ubuntu
mysql client/server + gem
redcar editor (once it's ever released) or some editor or other that
works well with ruby--besides our beloved vi, of course.
GL!
-r

 

[Aldric Giacomoni]

A few additional suggestions:
ubuntu
mysql client/server + gem
redcar editor (once it's ever released) or some editor or other that
works well with ruby--besides our beloved vi, of course.
GL!
-r

For any and all kinds of suggestions on what to include, please head to
Google Wave and do a search for the tag "ruby appliance" - you'll see
that we've made waves. Pun intended.