Evening all,
I have a rails app that I need to deploy to a 1&1 Virtual Server L Windows.
My setup uses a MYSQL db, rails 3.2, ruby 1.9 and was built on a mac.
I have read numerous accounts of Linux style deployments, however do the same rules apply when using a windows server? Some articles reccomend ftp'ing your app and then installing 3 other dependencies. Is this too good to be true?
I realise this is a fairly open ended question, but does anyone know the first few steps to getting this thing up and running or any helpful documents?
Thanks in Advance
Andy
I haven't tested it, because I'm not using a windows server, but have you checked this?
https://github.com/SciMed/capistrano-windows-server
I'm almost finished with the development of my first ruby on rails app. I am using windows for development. Now i want to deploy my app (most likely on iPage web hosting). the procedure described in Agile Web dev... appear to only work on MAC OS X (with passenger, etc) and didn't have much luck googling.
My questions are:
1- Is there a good and easy to follow tutorial/book/etc on how to set up local production server on windows (e.g. using apache and mysql (Possibly WAMP)) and porting it to a remote host?
2- can the book "Deploying Rails Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide" help me?
3- Would it worth the effort that i install VMware,Ubunto (or another Unix/Linux based OS) and do the production there?
Thank you!
I ran into a similar situation where we had to decide on Rails app deployment to a Windows server rather than to a Linux one. I did some research but never tried out anything since fortunately we decided to stick with a Linux server. I was not particularly happy with what I found but here it is in case it helps:
Deployment to Windows using Capistrano based gem
Articles on other deployment options to Windows
What kind of development environment needed to upgrade a webapplication developed in older version of Ruby deployed in Linux to latest version 2.3.11.
I am a windows .net developer and looking some help in terms of understanding the development environment. I know little bit about pearl and ruby.
Do i need to install Linux or mac. Or can i develop/test in windows and once ready deploy to linux?
I have a linux server, can i use that as development server and do the Remote desktop from my windows to that for development work? What IDE i should get install in that linux server.
any help will be appreciated.
Choice of development environments.
While you could develop your app in Windows and then deploy to a Linux server, that's almost never the right choice. Since you already have access to a Linux machine, Windows is certainly not the right choice in this case.
As for an IDE on the Linux box, you don't need one. Do yourself a huge favor, choose to learn either vim or emacs, suffer with the mental phase shifting for a week, and do all of your work via ssh to the Linux box. You will be slower in the short term, but the long term payoff is huge.
I would be willing to bet that you'll lose less time while learning one of those text editors than you will lose by dinking around with Ruby + Windows and then trying to sync that with your Linux environment.
Upgrading Rails to 2.3.11
This begs the obvious question. What version does the app use now? 2.3.* to 2.3.11 is a piece of cake. If you're talking about more ancient code, then plan on some pain and refactoring. If the code is really old, then seriously consider going straight to Rails 3.
I've been planning on developing a rails project on windows.
I've heard that the framework wasn't tested on windows (at least not the testing framework)
does anyone have any real experience with rails on windows?
are there any known bugs when running on windows?
does the testing framework work on windows?
I've been developing a Rails website on Windows & Mac (depending on where I am at the time) for a few months now and, in general, I haven't run into to many problems. Here's what I know:
The new Ruby 1.9.3 installer for Windows is nice because it comes with RubyGems (which a vague memory tells me was difficult before). That's what I'm using. I haven't been able to get the ruby-debug19 gem to install correctly on windows. So, I just comment that out in my Gemfile on my Windows computer. Other than that, I haven't had any issues.
With that said, however, I love developing on my Mac so much more than I do on Windows. I haven't found an editor that I love for Rails development on Windows (currently using Sublime 2 or Notepad++ with Explorer plugin), using Git is not as nice on Windows, and I just really don't like the Windows Command Prompt (I know there are other options, but still).
I have recently been working with another developer that has been developing on his Windows laptop. He's been using the same tools and Rails 3 codebase as myself (I'm on Mac OS X).
He has had a number of blocking issues that have wasted many hours of his time - for example he hasn't been able to run any of our RSpec tests, and some Rake tasks.
Getting the environment setup is a pain, and even when you do, it's stressful because you never know when you are going to hit the next bizarro Windows-only bug. The reality is that Windows is a rare OS among Rubyists, and even if that wasn't so, the Rails framework developers themselves are UNIX-oriented, so there is an order of magnitude less scrutiny given to testing and development on the platform.
What's more, many of the sweet tools in the Ruby world are command-line and they work better in a real POSIX shell.
My co-worker has now bought a MacBook, and is enjoying a smoother development experience again.
But you don't need to buy a Mac; You would do just as well with dual-booting into Ubuntu (Or similar) on your existing laptop.
I prefer developing Rails with the help of Vagrant and some Chef cookbooks to create a virtual machine where I run my Rails code on. This solves the problem with some gems not working on Windows and seems to be faster. Here's a post a wrote how I got this working
I've tried 5 different ways to setup Rails development environment on Windows.
These includes virtualized Linux environments, Windows subsystem for Linux and alternative Ruby interpreter like JRuby. Rails on Ruby MRI works relatively well, but certainly there are gems that build native extensions that cannot be compiled on Windows. Depending on which gems your project requires, you might have a easier time.
I've got a short comparative write up here http://cs.mcgill.ca/~mxia3/2018/02/18/Five-different-Rails-development-environment-on-Windows-10-and-their-pros-and-cons/
I have been developing on Windows using Ruby (currently 1.9.2), Rails (both 2.3.x and 3), Rspec (1.3 and 2), Cucumber, Capybara, selenium-webdriver, sqlite3 for a few years now, and it all works most of the time. The company I work for deploys a Rails app on Linux and Windows along with our other piece of enterprise software.
That being said, I do run into weird issues a lot. I'm now trying to blog about them so that they're googlable and, eventually, I'm trying to learn how to fix them. Ruby Windows support has improvements to be made, for sure, but no one will bother fixing them if no one is using Ruby on Windows!
Definitely use the RubyInstaller. Luis Lavena, one of the main contributors, is really nice and responsive on the RubyInstaller mailing list and twitter.
I would not use Ruby on Rails on Windows for a production website, but it is commonly used for development, in particular by designers that need to work with RoR teams. We developed and use internally with our designer guy Rubystack, which is a free, all-in-one installer that setups a Rails development environment in just a few minutes.
In the installation documentation to RoR it mentions that there are many limitations to running Ruby on Rails on Windows, and in some cases, whole libraries do not work.
How bad are these limitations, should I always default to Linux to code / run RoR, and is Iron Ruby expected to fix these limitations or are they core to the OS itself?
EDIT Thanks for the answer around installation and running on Linux, but I am really trying to understand the limitations in functionality as referenced in the installation documentation, and non-working libraries - I am trying to find a link to the comment, but it was referenced in an installation read me when I installed the msi package I think
EDIT
Thanks for the references to IronRuby lately, it is certainly a project to watch, and as it, obviously, is a .NET language, it will be invaluable if it lives up to the promises. Eventually, however, in my case, I just bit the bullet and installed an Ubuntu server.
<bias> I should've done it years ago </bias>
Here's an overview of the current issues with Rails on Windows:
Ruby and Rails are slower on Windows than they are on Unix-like OS's.
A few gems and libraries don't work on Windows.
Some Unix-isms aren't available on Windows (examples).
The community is mostly on either Mac or Linux (This is a particularly hard one to deal with; nobody wants to be alone on one island when the rest of the tribe are partying, having fun and getting along great over on the other island. Community is important. It seems that most Windows developers that start with Rails quickly switch to a Mac or Linux. However, the small community of Windows Ruby users that do persist are extremely friendly, dedicated and knowledgeable - go say hi.)
Note much of the advice that follows is now outdated due to the magnificent efforts of the RubyInstaller team in bringing stability, compatibility and performance to Ruby on Windows. I no longer have to use VirtualBox, which says a lot about how far Ruby on Windows has come.
If you want more technical detail, the following are required reading. :
Ruby for Windows - Part 1
Is Windows a supported platform for Ruby? I guess not
Testing the new One-Click Ruby Installer for Windows
Still playing with Ruby on Windows
Chatting with Luis Lavena (Ruby on Windows)
Choice quote from that last one is:
AkitaOnRails: The most obvious thing is that any Gem with C Extensions without proper binaries for Windows will fail. Trying to execute shell commands will fail and RubyInline as well. What else?
Luis Lavena: Hehe, that's just the tip of the iceberg
Having said all that, I don't find developing with Rails on Windows too painful. Using Ruby is, for the most part, a pleasure. I'd avoid InstantRails because, to be frank, it's just as easy to install Ruby properly using the one-click installer, then doing a gem install rails. If you need Apache and MySQL, WAMP is a good bet, although even these aren't required if you just stick with Mongrel and SQLite.
What I've taken to doing recently is running VirtualBox with an instance of Ubuntu Server that closely mirrors the deployment server. I map a network drive to the Ubuntu Server, then I edit and run my code directly on the VM. It uses hardly any memory (it's currently using ~43MB; contrast that with Firefox, which is using ~230MB) and Rails actually performs better than running it natively on Windows. Plus you can experiment with your virtual server in relative safety. It's a really nice setup, I highly recommend it.
Finally, here are a couple of Ruby/Rails blogs aimed at Windows users:
DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog) (Luis Lavena)
Softies on Rails
Ruby On Windows
I found getting a development environment up and running with Instant Rails on Windows was really simple. Especially when using Netbeans or Radrails as the IDE.
Less than a 10 minute job.
What did those who struggled find to be the problem?
I've been developing Rails on a Windows PC for a couple of years and had no real problems installing back when I first started. However I recently re-built my machine and struggled to get the One-Click Ruby installer working and the latest version of Gems. So this is what I tried.
Option 1: Run a Linux Virtual Machine
I was really impressed with Charles Roper's idea of running Rails within a Linux virtual machine, and this is the route I intially went for. It all went pretty smoothly and I've been documenting it at budanters.blogspot.com. However I've been struggling with accessing the MySQL server (in Linux Virtual Machine) from the Windows host.
Option 2: Use jRuby
I recently installed the Windows version of NetBeans 6.5 Ruby bundle, and without being aware of it, this installs JRuby and the Rails gems. The IDE has a UI to install Gems, and I've now got my old application back up and running in my development enviromnent.
Update November 2009
I now use Netbeans 6.7 on Windows and in the whole I am very happy with it. The only downsides are that it installs JRuby 1.2, and I needed to install JRuby 1.3 manually to get something working (I can't remember what) and I have been completely unable to get deployment working with either Capistrano or Vlad the Deployer to work. Vlad uses Open4 which doesn't work with JRuby.
Update May 2010
Netbeans 6.8 comes with JRuby 1.4 so no longer have to fiddle around with manually installing JRuby 1.3. Also it seems that in JRuby 1.5 Open4 will now work, which means Vlad might start working.
Nobody mentioned Bitnami RubyStack yet? I've been using it for years, together with RadRails. Includes Apache, MySQL/Postgre, phpmyadmin, git etc. Optional Ruby 1.9.2/Rails 3.0b. You may also run the Ubuntu flavor of RubyStack in a VM but I haven't tried that yet.
There is a packaged installer available at http://railsinstaller.org/ which is worth checking out.
Personally I found getting Ruby + Rails up and running on windows a piece of cake. From download to browsing to my first 'HelloWorld' app took me all of 15 minutes. I didn't even bother with any of the InstantRails stuff.
Subsequently I can't say I encountered any of the reported speed problems or issues with Gems under Windows.
These guys also do a nice Ruby developers add on for Visual Studio:
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/
When I last fiddled around with Rails on windows, I used Instant Rails and found it to be a fairly painful process, except for the lack of updates to Instant Rails (which, from the look of the website is still a little bit of a problem, as instant Rails 2.0 uses ROR 2.0, while the newest version is 2.1). You might also look into the answers to this question as it mentions a number of other ways to get RoR running on windows easily.
You have windows options for getting everything up and installed, such as Instantrails:
However, my personal experience with trying to get colleagues up and running on windows is that it's a pretty painful experience. You should be able to get most (if not everything) running, but be prepared to spend a bit of time mucking round (and getting frustrated).
YMMV
I would probably recommend either Linux or Mac for rails development (but I'm slightly biased against windows, so you may need to take that with a grain of salt).
An option if you're stuck on Windows is to have virtual servers running Linux / BSD / what-have-you.
It solves lots of other problems also (allowing you to try multiple server configurations easily, etc.).
If you can't get away from windows use VMware and run some form of linux (ubuntu is popular). Your No.1 limitation will be compiled gems which do not play nicely on windows.
The majority of tutorials assume you're on some form of *nix, it's when you start to break outside of basic scaffolding when you'll feel the pain. Image manipulation, full-text search and even some db adapters will either only run on *nix or are a pain to setup.
The majority of web hosts run linux too, it's good to be developing on the same platform as your host, to avoid deployment headaches.
In general, Rails performance is a problem on Windows.
As far as your deployment setup, you can either run Rails in FCGI or use mongrel (and set up either Apache or IIS as a proxy). mod_rails (http://www.modrails.com) is the best deployment option for Rails today, but doesn't run on Windows.
You might find more luck using JRuby on Windows to run Rails in whatever JVM environment you want (tomcat, J2EE server, etc).
IronRuby isn't there yet to run Rails in a production environment, but eventually it will be aimed at running Rails inside any ASP.NET environment (IIS).
You could just use Cygwin and it's version of Ruby. That gets rid of the arguments about compiled gems not working on Windows - I've managed to compile a lot of gems that way.
The biggest limitation of running under Windows is that a lot of things are super slow.
See this thread. For a discussion.
Simple things like "script/console" and running rake tasks will take 5 times longer on Windows than they do on Linux or Mac.
Other limitations are:
No IE6 on Vista.
BackgroundRB and a many other c based gems do not work on Windows.
No passenger
I'm not a rails developer myself but I thought this may be of interest. Microsoft has released IronRuby 1.0, it's a version of Ruby that runs on the .NET platform that apparently runs 4x faster than the official Rails implementation on Windows.
http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/224600662
Official site
http://ironruby.codeplex.com/
For a speedup you could try my loader speeder upper (helps rails run faster in doze): https://github.com/rdp/faster_require
Also checkout spork, which works in doze
Alternative of RailsIntaller is RailsFTW. The Ruby & Rails are more updated.