Code Walhalla ...

So you want to play with Ruby?

I heard last week two people complaining about the difficulty to install ruby on a mac and start coding with all our precious gems. They deserve explanations.

Alright let’s have a quick look at that and let’s install our Ruby env with all tools required to code and deploy on heroku.

Being able to compile:

First of all you need GCC aka the compiler. It was previously coming along with XCode but it’s not the case anymore. You can get GCC from github. Download it and just unpack it as usual.

New packaging system:

If you’re bored by macport or if you dont know it already try homebrew. Homebrew is a package installer based on recipes. To install it:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

The script installs Homebrew to /usr/local so that you don’t need sudo when you brew install. It is a careful script, it can be run even if you have stuff installed to /usr/local already. It tells you exactly what it will do before it does it too. And you have to confirm everything it will do before it starts.

The Ruby env:

I suggest you to install rbenv, a ruby version manager. RVM was the first and awesome one but heavy to maintain and weirdly plugged into the system. To install rbenv and ruby-install (the rubies installer):

brew update
brew install rbenv
brew install ruby-build

Then to install the last ruby version and update your system:

rbenv install 1.9.3-p125
rbenv rehash
rbenv global 1.9.3-p125
gem update --system

Quickly this will install ruby 1.9.3 patch 125 (the last one today), define it as the default ruby version and update your gems. Now add the following lines to your .bash_profile:

export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"
eval "$(rbenv init -)"

I know that was a lot of manipulation just to install ruby but now you’ll be able to add any ruby version you want for a specific project or just for the sake of trying it !! Restart your terminal then check your ruby version:

ruby -v

GIT, THE Version control tool: 

I have tried CVS, SVN and Git. GIT is  definitely the best Version Control management tool. That’s said. Simple. To install it we’ll use brew:

brew install git

You’re DONE !!

Now you have a working env with as much ruby version as you want, a new (efficient) package manager and git command. To start hacking just git clone an OpenSource project from github like:

git clone git@github.com:vzmind/salesforce-padrino.git

That will create a salesforce-padrino folder and pull into the project code from github. When your modification are done on that project and you’ll want to deploy that code to heroku, you’ll have to launch:

heroku create
git push heroku master

The last step clearly deserves more explanations but it’s clearly a different topic (choosing your IDE, creating an Heroku app, using Git).