Ruby on Rails 2.1 - Installation

To develop a web application using Ruby on Rails Framework, you would need to install the following software −

• Ruby
• The Rails framework
• A Web Server
• A Database System

We assume that you already have installed a Web Server and Database System on your computer. You can always use the WEBrick Web Server, which comes with standard installation of Ruby. Most sites, however, use Apache or lightTPD in production.
Rails works with many database systems, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server. Please refer to a corresponding Database System Setup manual to setup your database.
Let's look at the installation instructions for Rails' Framework on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Rails Installation on Windows −

• First, let's check to see if you already have Ruby installed. Bring up a command prompt and type C:\> ruby -v. If Ruby responds, and if it shows a version number at or above 1.8.6 then type C:\> gem --version. If you don't get an error, skip to step 3. Otherwise, we'll do a fresh installation for Ruby.
• If Ruby is not installed, then download an installation package from rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org. Follow the download link, and run the resulting installer. This is an exe like ruby186-25.exe and will be installed in a single click. You may as well install everything . It's a very small package, and you'll get RubyGems as well along with this package.
• With RubyGems loaded, you can install all of Rails and its dependencies through the command line −

C:\> gem install rails --include-dependencies

Above command may take some time to install all dependencies. Make sure you are connected to the internet while installing gems dependencies.
Congratulations! You are now on Rails over Windows.
NOTE − In case you face any problem with above installation, there are chances that you may not have latest versions of Ruby or other Gems. So just issue the following command and you will have everything updated automatically.
Then try above command with updated gems.

C:\> gem update

Rails Installation on Mac OS X −

• First, let's check to see if you already have Ruby installed. Bring up a command prompt and type $ ruby -v. If Ruby responds, and if it shows a version number at or above 1.8.6 then skip to step 3. Otherwise, we'll do a fresh installation for Ruby. To install a fresh copy of Ruby, the Unix instructions that follow should help.

tp> tar xzf rubygems-0.8.10.tar.gz
tp> cd rubygems-0.8.10
rubygems-0.8.10> sudo ruby setup.rb

• Now use RubyGems to install Rails. Issue the following command.

tp> sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Above command may take some time to install all dependencies. Make sure you are connected to the internet while installing gems dependencies.
Congratulations! You are now on Rails over Mac OS X.
NOTE − In case you face any problem with above installation, there are chances that you may not have latest versions of Ruby or other Gems. So just issue the following command and you will have everything updated automatically.
Then try above command with updated gems.

tp> sudo gem update

Rails Installation on Linux −

• First, let's check to see if you already have Ruby installed. Bring up a command prompt and type $ ruby -v. If Ruby responds, and if it shows a version number at or above 1.8.6 then skip to step 5. Otherwise, Otherwise, we'll do a fresh installation for Ruby.
• Download ruby-x.y.z.tar.gz from www.ruby-lang.org
• Untar the distribution, and enter the top-level directory.
• Do the usual open-source build as follows −

tp> tar -xzf ruby-x.y.z.tar.gz
tp> cd ruby-x.y.z
ruby-x.y.z> ./configure
ruby-x.y.z> make
ruby-x.y.z> make test
ruby-x.y.z> make install

tp> tar -xzf rubygems-x.y.z.tar.gz
tp> cd rubygems-x.y.z
rubygems-x.y.z> ruby setup.rb

• Now use RubyGems to install Rails. Still in the shell, issue the following command.

tp> gem install rails --include-dependencies

Above command may take some time to install all dependencies. Make sure you are connected to the internet while installing gems dependencies.
Congratulations! You are now on Rails over Linux.
NOTE − In case you face any problem with above installation, there are chances that you may not have latest versions of Ruby or other Gems. So just issue the following command and you will have everything updated automatically.
Then try above command with updated gems.

tp> sudo gem update

Keeping Rails Up-to-Date −

Assuming you installed Rails using RubyGems, keeping up-to-date is relatively easy. Issue the following command −

tp> gem update rails

This will automatically update your Rails installation. The next time you restart your application it will pick up this latest version of Rails. While giving this command, make sure you are connected to the internet.

Installation Verification

You can verify if everything is setup according to your requirements or not. Use the following command to create a demo project in Rails environment.

tp> rails demo

This will create a demo rails' project using SQLite database. This is because now Rails uses SQLite as default database.
We can create our application which will use MySQL database. Assuming you have MySQL database setup on your machine, issue the following command to create an application which will use MySQL database −

tp> rails -d mysql demo

We will discuss about database setup in subsequent chapters. Currently we have to check if our environment is setup properly or not. So now use the following commands to run WEBrick web server on your machine −

tp> cd demo
demo> ruby script/server
=> Rails application started on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server; call with --help for options
[2007-02-26 09:16:43] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1
[2007-02-26 09:16:43] INFO ruby 1.8.2 (2004-08-24)...
[2007-02-26 09:16:43] INFO WEBrick::HTTPServer-start:pid=2836...
....

Now open your browser and type the following address text box.

http://localhost:3000

If everything is fine then you should have a message something like "Welcome aboard" or "Congratulations".

How to upgrade ?

If you are already running old version of Rails then here is the procedure to upgrade to latest version 2.1:

• If you want to move your application to Rails 2.0, you should first move it to Rails 1.2.6.
• If your application runs fine on 1.2.6 with no deprecation warnings, there's a good chance that it'll run straight up on 2.0.
• To complete the upgrade you would have to upgrade your extractions. If you are using, pagination, you will need to install the classic_pagination plugin. If you are using Oracle, you will need to install the activerecord-oracle-adapter gem. And so on and so forth for all the extractions.