Ubuntu as a Ruby dev environment?

[dima]

I am using Ruby 1.8.4 on both Windows XP and Debian and both works fine.

Morten

-----Original Message-----
From: dima [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 5:00 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: Ubuntu as a Ruby dev environment?

Some *general* advice:

1. Develop with portability in mind. That is, if you are building
something that must be cross-platform, make sure your actually *have*
the platforms and you test religiously on them.

2. Conversely, if you are *never* going to go to another platform, make
sure your marketing folks understand that. Yes, even open-source
projects have marketing folks.

Now a couple of specifics:

1. It isn't clear at all what your user base is from what you've said.
If your user base is Windows users (or even potentially includes them)
then you must not only be comfortable developing and testing on a
Windows platform, but *fluent* in it. In short, get over it -- learn how
to do it and quit bitching about what a pain in the ass it is!

2. Linux users tend to have their favorite distros and think nearly all
others (and Windows) are demon spawn. Linux *customers*, on the other
hand, tend to prefer stability, security and ease of use, and thus
gravitate to Red Hat and the commercially-supported version of SuSE from
Novell. Ubuntu is clearly making inroads into this market, as evidenced
by the deal with Dell. Money talks, you know.

My own *personal* preference in distros for working with Ruby in
general, as it is for other open source applications, is Gentoo. Because
it's compiled from source, you get more recent versions of the major
packages in the *stable* distribution than you would in most other
stable distributions, and you get the most recent versions for testing
within a few days of their release for the small popular ones, and as
soon as the more adventurous are willing to test them for the large
popular ones.

In addition, they have nearly all the major Ruby packages and gems in
the Portage repository already, including, of course, Rails, rake, and
rubygems itself, but *also* including RSpec, ZenTest and all of the
other goodies out of the Seattle genius pool, Nitro, Camping, etc.
(Which reminds me -- I need to file a bug to get them to package Ruport.)

But if your target user base is running Red Hat or Ubuntu or Etch RoR
servers, *that's* what you need to be developing on, not Gentoo. Sorry
about that.

Nowadays it is merely the same on witch OS you develop Ruby or Rails
projects.
Most of the parts you will use are OS independent or present in all of
them with minor differences.

Linux is perhaps natural environment for Ruby and Rails development
but you should always be open-minded.
You never know on which platform your next customer is on.

Personally I am on XP and Ubuntu with Eclipse and Aptana it makes no
huge difference.
Every platform has some unique things to spice our developer's life.

Use all of them if you have means.

So much fuss about witch editor is ... whatever.
Pick up one you know the best and just start enjoying in making a web
universe a better place.
Do not waste time about A vs. B.
Go out there and make the difference.

 

[joviyach]

If you are willing to try persevering with Windows one more time before
jumping to Linux or OS/X then have a look at Instant Rails
(http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?HomePage). Here is a quote
from the website:

"Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails,
Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you
simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not
modify your system environment."

Ian

I have tried to use the Instant Rails, but I cannot unzip the file for
some reason. I have tried 7zip, and the WinZip with no luck.

 

[Phlip]

I read that backwards, and thought you'd start with "With Linux..."