Ruby Installer for Windows

RubyInstaller.org

I was running into issues with installing gems and I stumbled onto this site. If you are a Ruby on Rails developer and you use the Windows OS to develop with, this is the site to go to. There are installers for multiple versions of Ruby interpreters as well as links to the DevKit which is a must have when installing gems that need compiling to run. Top notch site!

My development environment consists of the following:

• Windows 7 Professional
• CYGWIN 1.7.7
• Ruby  1.8.7
• Gem 1.3.7

First you need to make sure you have the correct version of the Rails framework installed. You can check the current version by generating a list of gems that are currently installed in your CYGWIN environment.

[bash gutter = "false"]

$ gem list
…
rails (2.3.8)
…

[/bash]

Now I want to try upgrade my Rails version to 2.3.9 which was released after Rails 3.0 to assist developers in the transition of their Rails apps to -v 3.0. To install the latest version of rails run this command on the CYGWIN command prompt:

[bash gutter = "false"]

$ gem install rails -v 2.3.9

[/bash]

Once everything has been installed, you should run the gem list process again to confirm the Rails gems have been installed properly.

[bash gutter = "false"]

$ gem list
…
rails (2.3.9, 2.3.8)
…

[/bash]

Now we want to create a new Rails application using the older version of the Rails framework. To do this we include the version number of the Rails framework that we want to use with underscores before and after the version number.

[bash gutter = "false"]

$ rails _2.3.8_ first_app

[/bash]

This will generate the first_app Rails app using version 2.3.8. To confirm the version of the application open the environment.rb file ([rails_app]/config/environment.rb) and around line 4 you should see the following rails

[ruby num=4]

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ’2.3.8′ unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

[/ruby]

NOTE:
I have not installed Rails 3.0 as it has just been released and I feel that it needs more time to mature. Something to keep in mind with developing on a Windows OS is that the majority of the Ruby on Rails community uses Mac OS for development and some gems just won’t compile in CYGWIN with out a lot of work. SO with that said I will wait to upgrade the servers to 3.0 for a few months until I am comfortable that I can produce the same functionality on the dev environments. This stems from my experience with enterprise environments and has nothing to do with the framework itself. To be honest I can’t wait to have Rails 3.0 stably running in a production environment.

God Bless

WPExplorer.com Screen Shot

Best Premium WordPress Themes – WPExplorer

I found this site this morning and I have to admit that I am very impressed with the layouts that AJ puts together. WPExplorer.com is going to the top of my list of resources for finding exquisite WordPress layouts.

JLW: This is great stuff if you’re looking to get into the mobile app market and can’t justify the huge expense for a Macbook for developing iPhone apps. You could start with this and when you become a BILLIONAIRE you can get the Macbook you always wanted. However, just remember where you got the idea. :-)

I will be producing articles on creating Flex apps for the Android in the upcoming months, but for now this is a great intro by Brian Rinaldi.

“Adobe Edge: Getting started with Adobe AIR for Android by Brian Rinaldi”

Mobile development is sexy — there’s no denying that. But for someone like me, who generally focuses on back-end development or behind-the-firewall Flex applications, building a mobile application sounds intimidating. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but I also know I am not alone. However, with new Adobe AIR for Android (currently in developer prerelease on Adobe Labs) and the Adobe Flash IDE, mobile development for Google’s new Android 2.2 operating system (code-named Froyo) couldn’t be easier.

In this article, I discuss the essential tools you need to start developing for AIR for Android using Adobe Flash Professional CS5. I walk you through getting AIR installed on your Android phone and configuring Flash software to develop for that platform. Then I show you how to build and deploy your first application. While this application won’t be groundbreaking, it can serve as a solid launching point for your new future as a mobile applications developer. (Note: The details of this tutorial were tested against the AIR for Android release as of August 1, 2010, on a Google/HTC Nexus One running Android 2.2.)

Dev Derby » About Dev Derby

The Dev Derby is one of the events taking place in Bloomington around The Combine (http://thecombine.org), the area’s first major technology conference, and at the start of the BFusion/BFlex conference (http://bflex.info). It is a day-long programming challenge where teams of developers work to create an application serving a real-world need.

Five teams will represent different programming languages—PHP, C#, Ruby, ColdFusion, and Java—to produce a demo application that will be released as open source software. Each application will be judged by knowledge leaders and representatives of the non-profit organizations benefiting from this work. Prizes will be awarded, following a panel discussion about the development process and the future of application programming.

Dev Derby is situated in The Combine along with other technology-related events, such as Tech Cocktail, Ignite Bloomington, and a variety of of other gatherings. It is hosted by the BFusion/BFlex conference, a two-day hands-on training event from the experts of Adobe Flex and ColdFusion. Dev Derby is inspired by our experience with Startup Weekend in 2008, but with a short day of coding and focused on a specific challenge.

The only trick on using this plugin is that I had to use the HTML view of my composer in order for the plugin to pickup the area(s) I wanted changed.

I stand corrected in what I had said earlier. I took the snippets of code [language]code here[/language] and wrapped it in <pre></pre> so that I could work with it in the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress and it seemed to print fine on the page.

Ruby Source Example:

[ruby]
class Example
  def example(arg1)
    return "Hello: " + arg1.to_s
  end
end
[/ruby]

ColdFusion Source Example:

[coldfusion]
<cfset foo EQ bar />
<cfoutput>#foo#</cfoutput>
<cfbreak/>
[/coldfusion]

As some of you may know I am in the process of cranking up WezBiz Technologies which will be a company that provides solutions that relate to IT genra. Some the articles that you will find on this blog will be in relation to me getting WezBiz off the ground.

I ask for feed back and/or any suggestions that you may have.

God Bless

Jason L. West, Sr.
Senior Applications Architect & Developer