Setting up Dev machine for Rails

After grappling with UEFI, GPT, Driver issues and what not, finally I have reasonably stable dual boot system. I used to follow this guide for setting up development environment, but it’s a bit outdated. So I decided to log the process. Here is how I set up my machine for Rails development.

Ubuntu

Before installing the tools, I ensure that all the installed packages and the package index itself is updated.

# Fetch latest packages info from sources
sudo apt-get update

# Update all installed packages
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

# If you want to play safe, use replace 'dist-upgrade' with 'upgrade'

man page of apt-get has detailed explanation for update, dist-upgrade and upgrade.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text has been my favorite text editor ever since I got outside the Java world and started exploring Python and Ruby. It’s lightweight, has great plugins and gives a lot of customization options. Here are my overrides for its default settings,

// Settings:
{
  // The number of spaces a tab is considered equal to
  "tab_size": 2,

  // Set to true to insert spaces when tab is pressed
  "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,

  // Set to true to removing trailing white space on save
  "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
}

// Keybindings:
[
  { "keys": ["ctrl+shift+o"], "command": "prompt_open_folder" }
]

The easiest way of installing sublime packages is using Sublime Package Control. Just go to its site and follow the installation instructions. Once you have installed Sublime Package Control, all you have to do is press Ctrl + Shift + P, go to Package Control: Install Packages and select the package you want to install. One package I find very useful is GitGutter. It shows an icon in the gutter indicating if line has been inserted, modified or deleted.

Terminal

The default terminal included in Ubuntu is fine for initial setup but for regular use I prefer dropdown terminals. They stay out of your way and you can conjure them when required. I started with yakuake but it has a lot of KDE dependencies, so I switched to tilda, which is really lightweight.

sudo apt-get install tilda

Git

Git is probably the most popular version control system in the Open Source community. Most of my recent code is on GitHub. In fact, this blog itself is hosted on GitHub.

sudo apt-get install git

Here is my ~/.gitconfig file:

[user]
  name = Nitish Parkar
  email = <my_github_email>
[color]
  ui = auto
[alias]
  co = checkout
  s = status
  b = branch
  hist = log --pretty=format:'%h %ad | %s%d [%an]' --branches --graph --date=short --max-count=10

Git aliases are shorthands for long git commands. Before I discovered them I almost always used to misspell status. Now it’s just git s!

Finally, I generate ssh key and add it to GitHub as explained in this article.

Ruby

I use RVM to install Ruby. Its installation is pretty straightforward. Once you have RVM, you can install multiple ruby environments and switch among them as and when required.

# List all available rubies
rvm list known

# Install a ruby
rvm install 2.1.1

# Show currently installed rubies
rvm list

# Switch ruby
rvm use 2.1.1

# Set default ruby
rvm use --default 2.1.1

For RVM to work properly, you have to pass --login flag to the shell. The way of doing this differs from terminal to terminal. This answer provides little explanation and links to appropriate resources. For tilda, set Preferences > Custom Command to /bin/bash --login.

I don’t use rdoc, so by default I don’t want to download rdoc and ri info for any gems. This can be achieved by adding the following line to ~/.gemrc.

gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri

I used to use RVM gemsets. But with bundler, Gemsets are not required. So I have stopped using them.

MySQL

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev
gem install mysql2

Apache and Passenger

Though Webrick or Thin are great for development, it’s nice to have Apache and Passenger around.

sudo apt-get install apache2

# for asset pipeline
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod expires

gem install passenger

passenger-install-apache2-module

# Dependencies:
# sudo apt-get install apache2-threaded-dev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev

At the end, passenger will tell you to copy paste a few lines to apache configuration file.

LoadModule passenger_module /home/nitish/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/gems/passenger-4.0.41/buildout/apache2/mod_passenger.so
<IfModule mod_passenger.c>
 PassengerRoot /home/nitish/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/gems/passenger-4.0.41
 PassengerDefaultRuby /home/nitish/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/wrappers/ruby
</IfModule>

Javascript Runtime environment

Rails asset pipeline requires Javascript Runtime environment to compile CoffeeScript, uglify JS, etc. You can use therubyracer gem but I prefer NodeJS, since it’s a dependency for a lot of dev tools.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make nodejs
# source
# https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager#ubuntu-mint-elementary-os

Miscellaneous

# required by paperclip
sudo apt-get install imagemagick

# nokogiri dependencies
sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev libxml2-dev

That’s it. Happy Coding! :)