Railsinstaller

Get up & running with Rails

I’ve had several issues with Rails before being able to make it work on nearly all platforms. First time I tried Rails it was on my iMac with OSX Tiger and it took me days to dig through forums and tutorials to find out what was missing and which is the correct way for which Rails version as there are plenty. Now again I ran into a problem with Ubuntu although it was more about installing Win7 and Ubuntu in the wrong order and messing things up. So this time Ruby and Rails was innocent. However I found Railsinstaller.org and decided now that I have a Win7 and I’m really eager to get working with Rails, I’m going to take this shortcut, forget about rvm and everything, just get a quick fast development environment ready and get coding. And it happened just like this.

The RailsInstaller package really helps you hit the ground and get running. It contains all the packages you need for a full Rails stack. Comes with the latest Ruby and Rails versions, currently:

• Ruby 1.9.2-p290
• Rails 3.1.1
• Bundler 1.0.18
• Git 1.7.6
• Sqlite 3.7.3
• TinyTDS 0.4.5
• SQL Server support 3.3.3
• DevKit

So you can get started quickly and will bother later with rvm and the bits and pieces. Well at least that was my attitude after struggling with Ubuntu and trying to get the ideal, optimal environment set up. When I will be fluent in Ruby I will optimize the settings. Now I’m happy to get going.

Installation

The installation is fairly easy but there is also a video which takes you through not just installing Ruby and Rails but also setting up your git account and github and setting up a free Engine Yard trial. RailsInstaller walkthrough, including interacting with Github and the Engine Yard Cloud free trial.