Setup recipe for Rails Girls

Cooking time: 5min active / 15-30min passive

To build apps and other things with Ruby on Rails, we need to setup some software and the developer environment for your computer.

Follow the instructions for your operating system. If you run into any problems, don’t panic. Inform us at the event and we can solve it together.

Setup for OS X

1. Let’s check the version of the operating system.

Click the Apple menu and choose About this Mac.

Apple menu

2. In the window you will find the version of your operating system.

If your version number starts with 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 or 10.10 this guide is for you. If it’s something else, we can setup your machine at the event.

About this Mac dialog

3a. If your OS X version is 10.9 or higher:

If your version number starts with 10.9 or 10.10, follow these steps. We are installing homebrew and rbenv.

3a1. Install Command line tools on terminal:

xcode-select --install

3a2. Install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

3a3. Install rbenv:

brew update
brew install rbenv rbenv-gem-rehash ruby-build
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/shims:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

3a4. Build Ruby with rbenv:

You can find the newest version of Ruby with the command “rbenv install -l”.

rbenv install 2.2.0

If you got “OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError: … : certificate verify failed” error, try it this way.

brew install curl-ca-bundle
cp /usr/local/opt/curl-ca-bundle/share/ca-bundle.crt `ruby -ropenssl -e 'puts OpenSSL::X509::DEFAULT_CERT_FILE'`

3a5. Set default Ruby:

rbenv global 2.2.0

3a6. Install rails:

gem i rails --no-ri --no-rdoc

3b. If your OS X version is 10.6, 10.7, or 10.8:

Download the RailsInstaller for your version of OS X:

Double click the downloaded file and it will unpack it into the current directory. Double click the the newly unpacked ‘RailsInstaller-1.0.4-osx-10.7.app’ or ‘RailsInstaller-1.0.4-osx-10.6.app’ and follow the instructions. It will open a README file with ‘Rails Installer OS X’ at the top. Please ignore the instructions in this file.

If the Rails version wasn’t the latest, you could update it using a following command on terminal.

gem update rails --no-ri --no-rdoc

Make sure that all works well by running the application generator command.

rails new railsgirls

4. Install a text editor to edit code files

For the workshop we recommend the text editor Atom.

If you are using Mac OS X 10.7 or older versions, you can use another editor Sublime Text 2.

5. Update your browser

Open whatbrowser.org and update your browser if you don’t have the latest version.

Now you should have a working Ruby on Rails programming setup. Congrats!

Setup for Windows

1. Install Rails

Search for command prompt in the search bar. Right click on command prompt and choose “Run as administrator”

Click Yes to allow the app to make changes to your PC

Copy the install text from the Chocolatey into the command prompt window.

If you don’t get the right result from command prompt you can try the same thing in powershell.

Close and reopen the command prompt as above. Then type:

choco install cmder

Note: If you see an error when installing cmder, you might need to install Visual C++ Redistributable.

Open Cmder It will be in C:\\tools\cmder if you can’t find it through the search function

run the following command:

choco install git
choco install atom
choco install sqlite
choco install ruby
choco install ruby2.devkit
choco install nodejs
gem install rails --no-document

Make sure that all works well by running the application generator command.

rails new railsgirls
cd railsgirls
rails server

2. Update your browser

If you use Internet Explorer, we recommend installing Firefox or Google Chrome.

Open whatbrowser.org and update your browser if you don’t have the latest version.

Setup for Linux

1. Install Rails

To install the Ruby on Rails development environment you just need to copy the line below for your Linux distribution (Ubuntu or Fedora), paste it in the Terminal and press Enter. Enjoy the text flying on the screen; it will take quite some time. Grabbing a refreshing drink before starting is encouraged.

For Ubuntu:

bash < <(curl -sL https://raw.github.com/railsgirls/installation-scripts/master/rails-install-ubuntu.sh)

If you are going to use RVM installations with gnome-terminal, you’ll probably need to change it’s default options before you can see and use the right Ruby and Rails versions. Find out how: RVM documentation.

For Fedora:

bash < <(curl -sL https://raw.github.com/railsgirls/installation-scripts/master/rails-install-fedora.sh)

Make sure that all works well by running the application generator command.

Make sure that all works well by running the application generator command.

rails new railsgirls
cd railsgirls
rails server

2. Install a text editor to edit code files

For the workshop we recommend the text editor Sublime Text.

3. Update your browser

Open whatbrowser.org and update your browser if you don’t have the latest version.

Now you should have a working Ruby on Rails programming setup. Congrats!

Virtual Machine

Instead of installing all tools on your machine, you can also set up a development environment in a Virtual Machine. Please find all the details here.

Using a Cloud Service

Instead of installing Ruby on Rails and an editor on your computer, you can use a webservice for development. All you need is a browser and an internet connection. This guide explains how to get started with nitrous.io. If you’re using a different service, they may use a different wording - e.g. ‘workspace’ instead of ‘box’, but the process is usually pretty similar.

Organizer: Nitrous is a paid service, but free for community usage purpose. Please contact Nitrous <pro [at] nitrous.io> to request a community account with the following list/information.

1. Update your browser

If you use Internet Explorer, we recommend installing Firefox or Google Chrome.

Open whatbrowser.org and update your browser if you don’t have the latest version.

2. Create an account

Go to https://nitrous.io and signup.

3. Setup a development box / workspace for ruby on rails

4. Find and restart your development box

5. Coding with your development box