ruby/rails from scratch

Aquamacs 1.4 RC1 (Emacs for Mac OS X)

2008-05-25T23:03:00.001-07:00

New release with Tabs (Command+T), "Frame Styles" on be default, full screen edit, persistant *scratch* buffer", Multi-lingual CocoAspell support, search on this Mac via Spotlight, and more.

Links:
Rails On Emacs

Git for OS X Installer

2008-05-14T03:18:00.001-07:00

Leopard only, Intel or PPC. See: git-osx-installer @ Google Code. Plus, OpenInGitGui allows you to add an icon to your finder, which will open Git-Gui for
the current folder.

NetBeans IDE 6.1 with Glassfish and MySQL Bundle

2008-05-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

Recently released, a bundle of NetBeans IDE 6.1 with Glassfish V2 Update 2 and MySQL Community Server, for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5, Solaris SPARC and Solaris x86.

Links:
Jruby (bundled with NetBeans)

Links #1

2008-05-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Tutorials
- [Rails] Rapid Rails (a series of articles containing succinct tips to increase your productivity when working with Ruby on Rails, multipart)

- [REST] Beginners Tutorial: Routing in Rails 2.0 (with REST) (a series for beginners wanting to learn about routing in Rails 2.0.)

- [REST] Seeing Rails Resources Clearly (let your named routes guide you)

- [Merb] Slapp (gently introducing the major components of the Merb micro-framework by building a simple chat wall style application)

Howtos
- [Ubuntu] Ubuntu 8.04 Rails Server Using Passenger (setting up a Ubuntu 8.04 server guide, multipart)

Gems and Plugins
- [Databases] Introducing the "uses_connection" Rails plugin (lets you specify which database connection to use on a per-model basis)

- [Patern] Rails endless page plugin

- [Generator] Stage (a code template generator that utilizes helpers as presenters to reduce ruby code used in views)

- [Generator] Rails Layout Extension (simplifying content_for usage)

IDE
- [TextMate] TextMate Ruby Bundle (a look at the Ruby bundle by its maintainer, James Edward Gray II)

CommunityEngine, an open source Rails social networking plugin

2008-05-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

MissingMethod is releasing CommunityEngine, an open source Rails social networking plugin that you be dropped into new or existing applications, instantly enabling all the features of a basic community site. Features include: Authentication (sign up, log in), User profiles, User search, Blogs with tagging, categories and rich text editing, Photo uploading and tagging, “Clippings” - visual bookmarks, Commenting and comment notification by e-mail (Blogs, profiles, photos, and clippings can be commented)
Forums, Friendships and activity feeds, Favoring of clippings and blog posts, and more.

Rails in the real world

2008-05-06T02:22:00.000-07:00

"I think Rails is a big part of the problem. Rails is clearly created by a company that will never distribute its software, and the Rails philosophy is again almost pathologically opposed to the idea of turning your software into a package. Imagine trying to make a Rails project LSB compliant -- your database.yaml file would need to be in /etc, your log directory would need to be in /var, and your actual code would need to be in /usr. There went all of your fancy Rails "convention over configuration", and you're suddenly fighting Rails instead of using it, and everyone you ask for help just tells you to "put it in vendor"."

[source: Luke Kanies]

Passenger (mod_rails) in the real world

2008-05-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

"Passenger has clearly targeted the shared host market, where hosts have a large memory footprint and a large number of applications. The same strategy doesn’t work quite as well for a small VPS memory footprint and a single application root, where it would make sense to keep an instance in memory at all times (and clean it up and respawn it, perhaps, on occasion if an idle timeout is reached)."

[source: Nick Plante]

JavaScript: performance tips and free chapter from Douglas Crockford’s "The Good Parts"

2008-05-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

"To understand what aspects of a Web application you need to improve, you must properly analyze the components of the application. This article looks at how you can use the Firebug extension to Firefox and the YSlow add-on to instrument a Web application."

Ajax performance analysis

"In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Douglas articulates a philosophy of coding in JavaScript that builds up on and extends the content of his popular video series and articles."

Chapter 5: Inheritance (1.2 MB PDF)
Free Chapter from Douglas Crockford’s “JavaScript: The Good Parts”

Git bash completion

2008-05-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Git should have been installed with

sudo port install -u git-core +bash_completion

-u uninstalls inactive port, or sudo port uninstall git-core @1.5.4.5_0+xxxxxx. add +svn if needed.

Then:

cp /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git ~/.git_auto_complete.sh
source ~/.git_auto_complete.sh (should be added to ~/.profile)

Now [TAB]

~/Projects $ git co
co commit config count-objects

[via: Pratik Naik]

Shipping quality code with git

2008-05-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

[Red Hat Magazine] Best practices with git: rebasing, squashing and reordering patches. Also, Git from the bottom up [PDF].

OT: Is Twitter abandoning Ruby on Rails?

2008-05-01T14:04:00.001-07:00

A bit of TechCrunch gossip.

Installing and Statring MysQL 5 on OS X with MacPorts

2008-05-01T01:34:00.000-07:00

Installing (via MacPorts)

$ sudo port -v install mysql5 +server

Setting up system tables

$ sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

Starting (manually)

$ sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqld_safe
Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /opt/local/var/db/mysql5

Changing root password
either

/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin5 -u root password 'new-password'
/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqladmi5 -u root -h [local.domain] password 'new-password'

or (to change root password, remove anonymous user and test db, and prevent remote root login), run:

/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Verifying status

mysqladmin5 -u root -p ping

Auto starting

$ sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist

I also symlinked mysql5 to mysql in /opt/local/bin

MacVim and the login shell

2008-04-30T01:55:00.000-07:00

Having RubyGems installed into /opt/local via MacPorts I couldn't use lots of stuff in MacVim, which seem to have ignored my bash_profile and other settings.

I seem to have missed this option in Prefrences:
- under "General",
- "When MacVim launches" -> Launch Vim process in a login shell.

This will inherit all of your local setting from .bash_profile.

Installing rmagick on Mac OS X (Tiger)

2008-04-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

I had the X11SDK installed as part of Xcode, but in order to compile and install ImageMagick and RMagick I needed X11.app as well. It is on Tiger's media, or available seperatly from here.

sudo port install tiff -macosx imagemagick +q8 +gs +wmf
sudo port install rb-rmagick or sudo gem install rmagick

Guilt

2008-04-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

A short howto with Guilt (Git Quilt) - "a series of bash scripts which add a Mercurial queues-like functionality and interface to git."

Gitback: Git based backup tool (with OS X support)

2008-04-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

gibak is backup tool based on Git. It uses Git's hook system to handle metadata - save and restore the information Git doesn't track itself, such as permissions, empty directories and optionally mtime fields.

Install

cp find-git-* gibak ometastore.ml to path

Usage
- Run once to initialize the backup system

~ $ gibak init

- Edit .gitignore to ignore files and paths, or add exceptions etc.

/Desktop
/Videos
/Music
/opt
/.*
!/.bash*
!/.tcsh*
!/.zsh*
!/.emacs
!/.gnupg
!/.mail
!/.maildir
!/.Maildir
!/.mail-aliases
!/.muttrc
!/.ssh
!/.vimrc
.#*
*~

- Perform the backup

gibak commit

Git branch in bash prompt

2008-04-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

Couple of options to get the working branch of git in your bash prompt:

http://pastie.textmate.org/170118
http://pastie.caboo.se/pastes/165446

* in ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc

Installing librmagick-ruby on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-04-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

librmagick-ruby is broken because of a dependency on libmagick9, which is not available for Hardy.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
librmagick-ruby: Depends: librmagick-ruby1.8 but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

There's a bug report for this. Was able to by pass by installing the Gutsy version.

Installing RubyGems to user directory

2008-04-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

There are tones of articles on the web about how to install RubyGems to a user directory, either rubygems (the "gem" bin) itself, or just the gems. I've run into various problems trying to follow few of this articles, and eventually managed to get it working with the following.

1. Remove old rubygems if installed already (sudo apt-get remove --purge rubygems), and make sure to manually remove anything left in /usr/bin/gem* if still there...

2. Download source and extract to work directory

3. Create private installation directory (e.g. ~/opt) and re-export PATH*

export PATH=$PATH:/home/usharf/opt/bin/:/home/usharf/opt/gems/bin

4. Install RubyGems from source

(~/rubygems-1.1.1/) ruby setup.rb all --prefix=/home/usharf/opt/

This will create local bin and lib subdirectories under ~/opt.

5. Export GEM_HOME as /home/[username]/opt/gems and install whatever gems needed*

6. Don't forget to add set PATH and GEM_HOME in ~/.bashrc, and unset older stuff (e.g. /var/lib/gems/1.8./bin in Debian/Ubuntu etc.)

Verify with:

usharf@inspiron:~$ which gem
/home/usharf/opt/bin/gem

usharf@inspiron:~$ gem env
RubyGems Environment:
- RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.1.1
- RUBY VERSION: 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i486-linux]
- INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /home/usharf/opt/gems
- RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/bin/ruby1.8
- RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
- ruby
- x86-linux
- GEM PATHS:
- /home/usharf/opt/gems
- GEM CONFIGURATION:
- :update_sources => true
- :verbose => true
- :benchmark => false
- :backtrace => false
- :bulk_threshold => 1000
- REMOTE SOURCES:

usharf@inspiron:~$ env | grep GEM
GEM_HOME=/home/usharf/opt/gems

usharf@inspiron:~$ env | grep PATH
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/home/usharf/opt/bin/
WINDOWPATH=7

* You might want to set ~/opt/bin first in PATH
* May require installing ruby-dev and other headers

Upgrading RubyGems in Ubuntu 8.04 ("Hardy")

2008-04-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu 8.04 ships with RubyGems 0.9.4.

gem env
RubyGems Environment:
- VERSION: 0.9.4 (0.9.4)
- INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /var/lib/gems/1.8
- GEM PATH:
- /var/lib/gems/1.8
- REMOTE SOURCES:
- http://gems.rubyforge.org

To upgrade I first tried (over a brand new clean install):

usharf@inspiron:~$ sudo gem update --system
Updating RubyGems...
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Attempting remote update of rubygems-update
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find rubygems-update (> 0) in any repository

To solve this, I run "sudo gem update" and then tried again - which works.

sudo gem update --system
Updating RubyGems...
Attempting remote update of rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-1.1.1
Updating version of RubyGems to 1.1.1
Installing RubyGems 1.1.1
RubyGems system software updated

Installing gems from sources with Edgy

2008-04-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Edgy can help installing and updating gems from source code repositories. It'll download, pack and install gems directly from their source code repositories (git, and in the future svn too).

I used it to setup Merb and it's various dependenices, including RSpec, Datamapper and DataObjects. Installing the whole Merb stack can be as easy as this:

sudo sake edgy:install packages="merb-stack"

Compiling lighttpd+cml MacPorts

2008-03-14T02:02:00.001-07:00

I run into problems installing lighttpd with cml support on OS X 10.4. It depends on lua, but compilation fails even though it is installed.

checking for memcache.h... yes
checking if lua-support is requested... yes
checking for LUA... ./configure: line 26370: no: command not found
./configure: line 1: no: command not found
configure: error: Package requirements (lua >= 5.1) were not met:

Don't know what the problem is (pkg-config?), but managed to finish the installation after setting this manually:

export LUA_LIBS="-L/opt/local/lib -llua -lm"
export LUA_CFLAGS="-I/opt/local/include"

Had to manually remove lighttpd first, and reinstall lighttpd+cml to have the launchd scripts installed.

Will open a ticket after my account on MacPorts will be enabled.

(Yet another) Ruby QuickRef

2008-02-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

Ruby QuickRef. Related stuff also here.

Fastloader RSS reader code released

2008-02-08T10:59:00.001-08:00

"Fastladder (http://fastladder.com/) is the best solution for feed-hungry people who want to consume more RSS/Atom feeds, and this is its open-source version. The open-source Fastladder, so called OpenFL, is an RSS reader to be installed on your PC or server with a capability to handle RSS feeds available within your Intranet."

Fastladder - RSS Reader built on Rails - was released under MIT License. It supports OpendID, uses restful_authentication, feed-normalizer, rfeedfinder and needs the FreeImage library (Windows, Linux or OS X).

Using MacPorts I'm seeing this:

---> Fetching freeimage
---> Attempting to fetch FreeImage393.zip from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/freeimage
---> Verifying checksum(s) for freeimage
---> Extracting freeimage
---> Configuring freeimage
---> Building freeimage with target all
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_graphics_freeimage/work/FreeImage" && make all " returned error 2
Command output: __ZTVN10__cxxabiv117__class_type_infoE
__ZTVN10__cxxabiv120__si_class_type_infoE
___cxa_pure_virtual
_ferror
_fflush
___sF
_exit
_fprintf
_getenv
__DefaultRuneLocale
_longjmp
_strncpy
_abort
_strtod
_gmtime
_bsearch
_lfind
_qsort
_rand
___maskrune
_fputc
_fputs
___error
_clearerr
_fdopen
_strerror
_vsnprintf
/usr/libexec/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/libtool: internal link edit command failed
make[1]: *** [libfreeimage-3.9.3.dylib-i386] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

Trying to follow this solution here. I then Found fastladder-read-only/freeimage-darwin/libfreeimage-3.10.0.dylib, which I copied over into {RAILS_ROOT}/lib/libfreeimage-3.10.0.dylib.

Working with rails.vim

2008-02-08T05:17:00.001-08:00

Using MacVIM
http://code.google.com/p/macvim/

My vimrc contains (thus far)

set nocompatible
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on

:colorscheme vividchalk
:set number
:set hlsearch

:command -bar -nargs=1 OpenURL :!open

let g:rails_default_file='db/config.yml'
let g:rails_default_database='sqlite3'
let g:rails_menu=2

- The OpenURL command is set for Safari (Used in :RPreview)
- g:rails_default_file sets the default page to open after the creation of a new rails project
- let g:rails_default_database='sqlite3' (not needed, default)
- let g:rails_menu=1 does not seem to create a separate menu for rails