Snow Leopard Rails Dev Setup Guides

You can never have too many. Much like every new version of OSX, there have been a plethora of "How to install BLANK on Snow Leopard" blog posts and walk-throughs detailing all the little tips and tricks around how to install some tool or piece of software.  Having a lot of options is awesome, but in the words of the great Biggie Smalls, "mo' blog posts, mo' problems". That IS how it went, right? Anyway, with all of these walk-throughs, how do you know which ones are good, and which one just suck.  Well, you don't really... So here's a list of a few [confirmed] valid and useful dev setup walk-throughs: First, this is actually a series of posts, as opposed to one single write-up.  Actually, its not even a series of posts.  Its just the search results for 'Snow Leopard' on the <a title="Hive Logic website" href="http://hivelogic.com/" target="_blank">Hive Logic</a> site.  So really, its only the first 3-5 posts that matter. <a title="Snow Leopard search results on HiveLogic.com" href="http://hivelogic.com/search/results/a7a831b978f2667fa301ea095d3d8fa7" target="_blank">http://hivelogic.com/search/results/a7a831b978f2667fa301ea095d3d8fa7</a> This is the route that I personally followed after a fresh install of Snow Leopard, and I had everything up and running in no time. Next, <a title="RobbyOnRails.com" href="http://robbyonrails.com/" target="_blank">Robby On Rails</a> did a thorough and entertaining post on Snow Leopard Rails dev env setup, or SLRDESU for short.  Acronyms make everything better (AMEB).  I don't know about you, but Robby's older post about getting setup with Passenger came in handy for me on more than one occasion. <a title="The Robby On Rails walk-through" href="http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2010/02/08/installing-ruby-on-rails-passenger-postgresql-mysql-oh-my-zsh-on-snow-leopard-fourth-edition" target="_blank">http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2010/02/08/installing-ruby-on-rails-passenger-postgresql-mysql-oh-my-zsh-on-snow-leopard-fourth-edition</a> His latest post covers everything from start to finish, and he even included a few video to pass the time while waiting for binaries to build and whatnot.  I haven't personally used this walk-through, but based on my previous experience with Robby's posts, and the recommendation from coworkers, I'm sure it'll get you where you need to be. Another noteworthy mention comes from the guys over at <a title="Thoughbot website" href="http://thoughtbot.com/" target="_blank">Thoughtbot</a>, the makers of such wonderful tools as Shoulda, Paperclip, and Factory Girl.  Their robot-laden guide goes beyond just Rails/dev-related stuff, and covers the likes of several generally useful OSX tools.  Things like Quicksilver, Fluid, and Firefox/Firebug. <a title="Thoughbot walk-through" href="http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/159805668/2009-rubyists-guide-to-a-mac-os-x-development" target="_blank">http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/159805668/2009-rubyists-guide-to-a-mac-os-x-development</a> This is another one that I haven't personally used, but I think we can trust the guys over at Thoughtbot.  After all, their company reputation depends on it! So there you have it.  Three different hand-holding recipes for getting you set up on Snow Leopard.  If you haven't upgraded yet, what're you waiting for?  Get to it! 2010-03-05T02:36:39Z Ready to upgrade to Show Leopard? Dreading the hassle of reinstalling and configuring your dev environment? Here's three step-by-step guides that will help get you back up and coding in no time. 40 osx, snow leopard, ruby, rails, mysql, git, upgrade, development, guide true osx-rails-dev-setup-walk-throughs Snow Leopard Rails Dev Setup Guides

2010-03-05T02:36:39Z

I had recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and I was in the process of reinstalling most of the ruby gems.  The geoip_city gem was the only one that gave me a bit of trouble, so I figured I'd post how I got it working. <ol> <li>Go <a title="Maxmind GeoIP source download" href="http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/c/" target="_blank">here</a> and download the latest source for the GeoIP C api</li> <li>Untar the source, cd into the directory</li> <li>Run <code>./configure</code></li> <li>Then run <code>make && sudo make install</code></li> <li>Finally, run <code>sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install geoip_city -- --with-geoip-dir=/opt/GeoIP</code></li> </ol> The key is the <code>ARCHFLAGS</code> parameter in the last step.  This indicates the native extensions are to be built for a 64 bit architecture. Also, if you need the free GeoIP City Lite database, you can find it <a title="GeoIP City Lite database download link" href="http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz">here</a>.  I hope this helps. 2009-12-28T19:14:47Z A quick walk-through of how to install the geoip_city gem on OS X Snow Leopard 10.6. 38 snow leopard, osx, geoip, geoip-city, gem, install, ruby, 10.6 true geoip-city-gem-on-snow-leopard Geoip_city gem install on Snow Leopard

2009-12-28T19:15:07Z

Earlier this afternoon, I was debugging an ajax call that consistently resulted in an error, but only in IE.  Checking the log file, I found this: <pre class="terminal">Processing ApplicationController#index (for 192.168.1.108 at 2009-10-27 14:37:03) [GET] Session ID: ddde16cf83baca85a81e9fb0772c2844 Parameters: {"format"=>"js", "page"=>"1"} ActionController::MethodNotAllowed (Only get, head, post, put, and delete requests are allowed.): /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing/recognition_optimisation.rb:65:in `recognize_path' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing/route_set.rb:384:in `recognize' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:154:in `handle_request' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:107:in `dispatch' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:104:in `synchronize' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:104:in `dispatch' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:120:in `dispatch_cgi' /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:35:in `dispatch' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/railz/request_handler.rb:50:in `process_request' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_request_handler.rb:207:in `main_loop' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb:378:in `start_request_handler' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb:336:in `handle_spawn_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/utils.rb:183:in `safe_fork' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb:334:in `handle_spawn_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:352:in `__send__' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:352:in `main_loop' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:196:in `start_synchronously' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:163:in `start' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/railz/application_spawner.rb:213:in `start' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/spawn_manager.rb:262:in `spawn_rails_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server_collection.rb:126:in `lookup_or_add' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/spawn_manager.rb:256:in `spawn_rails_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server_collection.rb:80:in `synchronize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server_collection.rb:79:in `synchronize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/spawn_manager.rb:255:in `spawn_rails_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/spawn_manager.rb:154:in `spawn_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/spawn_manager.rb:287:in `handle_spawn_application' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:352:in `__send__' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:352:in `main_loop' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/lib/phusion_passenger/abstract_server.rb:196:in `start_synchronously' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/bin/passenger-spawn-server:61 Rendering /Users/brent/Intridea/project/vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/templates/rescues/layout.erb (method_not_allowed)</pre> WTF?  That told me a whole lotta nothing. First of all, it was blowing up before it even got into the application code, which was was strange because it worked just fine in Firefox, Safari, etc.  Second, I checked the response body and it was returning html.  Html?  The format is clearly specified as "js" in the request parameters.  Double-checking the controller code, there was definitely a respond_to block with format.js, so why was it returning html? I showed this to one of my coworkers and he asked if I had tried switching the format calls in the respond_to block.  There were two, one for html and one for javascript.  I switched them up, and put the format.js first.  I reloaded the page, and what do you know, it worked!  No error.  Again, wtf?  He told me that this same bug had kicked his ass on a previous project. Aparently, IE7 isn't specific about what sort of response it expects in the accept header.  This causes Rails to merely return the first format that it comes to.  In my case, the html. So if you're not seeing the format that you're expecting when testing with IE7, try reordering the format calls in the respond_to block. 2009-10-28T01:26:06Z IE7 doesn't explicitly specify what format it expects in the accept header. This causes Rails to render the first format in the respond_to block. 37 rails, respond_to, ie, ie7, format, bug true ie7-accept-header-and-rails-respon-to-bug IE7's Accept Header And Rails respond_to Bug

2009-10-28T01:26:30Z

Eww, Windows? Yeah, I said it.  As we all know, there's a million and one schmucks out there still rockin' Internet Explorer as their default browser.  That means if you want that spreadsheet-in-the-cloud app you've been working on to hit critical mass, you better test it in IE. If you're like me, then you've recently started running some or all of your apps locally via <a title="The Passenger Homepage" href="http://www.modrails.com/" target="_blank">Passenger</a>.  This can cause a bit of a problem when it comes time to test in IE.  At least, it did for me anyway. I use <a title="Parallels Desktop for Mac" href="http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/" target="_blank">Parallels</a> for my Windows testing, and an old version at that.  From what I hear, <a title="VMWare Fusion - Mac Desktop Virtualization" href="http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/" target="_blank">VMWare</a> is better, but I'm too cheap to buy it and I just don't really care that much.  Prior to using Passenger locally, I would just point IE at my mac's IP address, port 3000, and everything was kosher.  Well, with Passenger, that no worky. Now, I'm sure there's probably a way to configure Parallels to allow me to test a Passenger app, but from what I can tell that either requires an updated version of Parallels or more time Googling than I'm willing to spend. I knew that I could access my local Apach instance from any machine on my home network, so I figured there's got to be a way to hit my Passenger apps since they're running under that same Apach instance.  With a little help from a fellow <a title="Dave's Intridea profile" href="http://www.intridea.com/about/people/naffis" target="_blank">Intridean</a>, I got it working. Here's what you do: 1. Set your app up in Passenger, like you normally would.  I use the pref pane. <a title="Passenger Pref Pane" href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/17/original.png?1256675869"><img style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/17/medium.png?1256675869" alt="passengerpane.png" width="300" height="223" /></a> 2. Determine you mac's IP address.  An easy way is to look in the sharing section of the System Preferences. <a title="Sharing Pref Pane" href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/18/original.png?1256676029"><img style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/18/medium.png?1256676029" alt="sharingprefpane.png" width="300" height="247" /></a> 3. On your Windows machine, add an entry to the hosts file with your mac's IP address and the app's domain (local) domain name.  The host file is in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc. <a title="Windows Host File" href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/19/original.png?1256676196"><img style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/19/medium.png?1256676196" alt="hostsfile.png" width="300" height="196" /></a> That's it!  Point IE at http://yourapp.local and you should be golden.  This will work for subdomains also, assuming you've added the *.yourapp.local alias to you Passenger conf. 2009-10-27T20:59:36Z How to test your Rails app running on Passenger from Internet Explorer and Windows. It's not as hard as you might think... 36 rails, passenger, mod_rails, windows, internet explorer true access-your-passenger-app-from-windows Access Your Passenger App From Windows

2009-10-27T21:03:24Z

<img style="float: left;" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/brentmc79-prod/files/12/medium.png?1250352229" alt="Picture_6.png" width="280" height="300" /> Out of sheer boredom last night, I decided to whip up a mobile view for my blog. It was extremely easy thanks to the <a title="Mobile-fu github page" href="http://github.com/brendanlim/mobile-fu/tree/master" target="_blank">mobile-fu</a> plugin by my friend <a title="Brendan's blog" href="http://brendanlim.com/" target="_blank">Brendan</a>.  I also found a few tips and tricks from <a title="Jun 19 Tutorial: Building a website for the iPhone" href="http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/" target="_blank">this post</a> on the Engage Interactive blog such as how to handle orientation changes and how to specify an image for home screen bookmarks. I did most of my testing via the iPhone Simulator from the SDK and also a <a title="Fluid App-specific browser" href="http://fluidapp.com/" target="_blank">Fluid</a> browser which allows you to specify mobile safari as the user agent, giving you the proper look, and you can use Safari's built-in Firebug-like tools. If you've got an iPhone, give it a look... 2009-08-15T19:51:19Z I recently updated my blog with a mobile view formatted for the iPhone. Here's how... 34 iphone mobile rails mobile-fu ruby layout true now-in-mobile-format Now in mobile format...

2009-08-15T20:01:38Z