What does this instruction in the Bundler setup mean? - ruby-on-rails

I'm trying to setup Bundler with Rails 2.3.10 to make the transition to Rails 3 easier. But I'm not sure what the instruction on this page means. Am I supposed to require all the gems that I'm using in my app? If so, where? Thanks for reading.

Use the Rails 2.3 tutorial http://gembundler.com/rails23.html it's better on your case.
The setup made all requirement of all gem in your Gemfile. He avoid to do a lot of require ''.

Related

Is it possible to create a ruby gem that when added to a rails project simply appends code to its initializers?

I've got some helper code (monkey patches) I tend to carry around from rails project to rails project via simply copying files or pasting code into the initializers folder.
I think a clean way to deploy different categories of my initalizer code would be to simply add gems to my project Gemfile that would do the equivalent of this for me. I'm not very skilled at creating gems or the deeper side of ruby on rails engineering so I just wanted to know if this were possible before I got started with it.
Yes, this is definitely possible. It should be probably enough to make a simple gem, put your monkey-patches there and require them in the gem entry point (e.g., if the gem is called foobar, then bundler will require lib/foobar.rb by default).
There is a guide on creating gems available in Bundler docs. In case you need to interact with Rails application configuration, you can take a look at Rails Engines.

In Rails, how to update plugins used in an application?

If I use devise, or any other plugin for that matter, what are the best practises for updating it when its in my rails 3 app?
I know devise allows you to modify things, how will this work?
in rails 3 you should most likely be managing everything through your Gemfile and bundler. You would update and maintain your gems through bundler. http://gembundler.com/

Necessary steps for using a gem (e.g. json) in Ruby on Rails app?

I'm having trouble getting rubygems to work in my Rails app. Specifically, I'm trying to use the json gem, documented here: http://flori.github.com/json/ I can successfully use JSON.parse() in IRB and script/console but not in my rails app.
I know it's some combination of config.gem 'json' in environment.rb and other things, but can't find a good explanation anywhere.
Can someone give me a concise list of what is required to use this gem OR point me towards comprehensive documentation of using gems in Rails? thanks!
config.gem is used for gem dependency in rails and it does nothing more than telling rails that a gem is needed, and helping the user install the appropriate gem, etc (more details here: http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/4/1/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-gem-dependencies)
however by installing a gem, it should be able to be used by the rails app automatically, if not, probably you can add require "json" into environment.rb or in an .rb files in the initializers folder?
Hope it helps =)
I solved it. There's decent documentation here: http://apidock.com/rails/Rails/Configuration/gem
Once you have used config.gem in environment.rb, you should not need to 'require' it later.
My problem was that I had not stopped and restarted the server! It worked in script/console because everything was getting reloaded every time.

Reusing Ruby code across several Rails applications

I have developed a simple library in Ruby and need to use this in several Rails applications (some of which are not built yet). What is the best way to easily add this Ruby library to several Rails applications as and when required? Our team is running Ubuntu and our repository is Mercurial.
Should I use a...
Rails plugin? This would be my first
choice but it appears not to support
Mercurial??
Ruby Gem?
Custom Rake script?
Other options??
Any pointers would be much appreciated!
Ruby already has an established mechanism for code sharing i.e. RubyGems. Jeweler makes Gem creation easy. I'd recommend that you check it out.
Make a gem or a plugin. Gems are better in my opinion, easier to manage.
My rule of thumb:
If it doesn't depend on rails, make it a gem.
If it depends on rails, make it a plugin.
Make a Rails plugin. It doesn't "support" Mercurial in the sense that you can't do script/plugin install $REPO_URL and have it work automatically, but if it's for your own use, then you won't miss that feature.

Getting started with rails? Must have gems?

I'm starting work on a project using Rails, but I'm waiting for the 3rd edition of the pragmatic rails book to come out before I purchase a book.
Anyway, my question is a bit more pointed than how do I get started...
What are some of the must have gems that everyone uses?
I need basic authentication, so I have the restful authentication gem, but beyond that, I don't know what I don't know. Is there a run down of this information somewhere? Some basic setup that 99% of the people start with when starting a new rails application?
Thanks in advance.
The gems and plugins that I tend to use on most of my projects are:
Restful Authentication -- For authentication
Will Paginate -- For pagination
Attachment Fu -- For image and file attachments
RedCloth -- For textile rendering
Capistrano -- For deployment
For pagination, will_paginate.
This is very, very subjective because it all depends on what your application does! However, I've just had a look at the Gems I have installed and the one that absolutely does leap out as mandatory is Capistrano.
BTW Restful Authentication is a Rails plugin not a Gem.
HAML is a must have. You'll never think of HTML in the same way again -- No more tag soup.
sudo gem install haml
sudo gem install ZenTest
rspec on rails
How can nobody have mentioned andand yet? It's the best thing since ||=
The only gems you need are:
Rails
Rake
If you "gem install rails" you'll get everything you need for Rails. You only need gems when you need them, so it's not worth worrying about before then.
EDIT: Actually there are a couple more you'll probably need:
mysql - or whatever Ruby database driver you need
mongrel - you don't necessarily need this until production, but it's nice to use in dev/test too
ZenTest - I use this mainly for "autotest" so that my tests run in a console window whenever my source files change
There could be many other gems that help you but we'd need more info from you to know if they're applicable, eg:
Web scraping (hpricot)
CSV (fastercsv)
Amazon S3 support (aws-s3)
Image manipulation (rmagick)
Graphing (gruff) - I use this as a plugin
Role-based security (role_requirement) - This one is a plugin too
mini_magick instead of rmagick.
Might want to keep an eye on: http://rubygems.org/ - you can see some interesting stats there re: most downloaded, most active, etc...
Also interesting and somewhat telling: https://github.com/languages/Ruby
This is a old thread but I thought I'll refine the list with what I believe to be must have gems at this point in time:
RSpec or Shoulda - tools for BDD/testing
factory_girl - fixture replacement
will_paginate - simple pagination
paperclip - image uploading/attachment
CanCan - authorization
Authlogic - authentication
HAML - templating engine

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