• Registered: 2010-05-27
  • Posts: 1

Topic: Best Environment For an OS X user? Newbie Questions

First post.

Ok... so I've read a number of guides for setting up Rails on my machine (aluminum macbook, OS X 10.5). I've updated the Rails install that came with OS X and installed X Code. But I have a couple questions:

- I have Coda, and love it. But I hear it's lacking in Rails support... would you guys advise against Coda? I also have Textmate and Transmit that I could use, I guess. I also have Dreamweaver.

- For a newbie who would like as much hand-holding as possible... is BitNami's RubyStack a good idea for deploying a dev environment on my machine?

Are there any other tools or newb-specific advice you can point a new user too? I'm not a coder... I've always been a designer, so I'm kinda overwhelmed by the amount of options available in setting up my environment/workspace.

I am serious about becoming a competent rails coder though... I just don't want to regret using a dated setup or the wrong tools, right out of the box.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

  • From: Rijeka, Croatia
  • Registered: 2010-05-31
  • Posts: 5

Re: Best Environment For an OS X user? Newbie Questions

First I recommend you take a look at homebrew (the easiest package manager):
http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/
Then check out rvm (to handle multyple versions of ruby on your system, and rails too wink):
http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/
Also check some cool gems to irb to support colors (hirb, wirble, ...).

Editor you use is simply the one you find yourself best in. In my case it's textmate.
Also, take a look at peepopen:
http://blog.peepcode.com/tutorials/2010 … xt-editors

If you got any other question, feel free to ask smile

  • Registered: 2010-11-02
  • Posts: 8

Re: Best Environment For an OS X user? Newbie Questions

If you're running 10.5 you already have Ruby.

Download RubyGems from here: http://rubyonrails.org/download, then just run "ruby setup.rb" to install gems and "gem install rails" to install rails and you're ready to go!

type: "rails myapp" to create a test app. you should get a directory called myapp full of rails code.

Editorwise, Textmate is good to start with. It's what everyone uses and it's nice because it does just enough for you but not too much so you stay close to the code. Drag the myapp folder onto the textmate icon in the dock to open a project.

Good luck with it!