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Note much of the advice that follows is now outdated due to the magnificent efforts of the RubyInstaller team in bringing stability, compatibility and performance to Ruby on Windows.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.
Related
I am currently starting Ruby on Rails development and currently use Windows (XP or 7), but I find lots of cases where gems don't seem to do what they should or its a pain to install and use them under Windows, like twitter-bootstrap seems fine for Mac OS but I had to work out that sass-bootstrap was better for Windows. It just goes on and on, like today I cannot seem to get launchy to do its thing when RSpec testing, although I know that my lack of experience doesn't help.
So should I just get a Mac ? Would getting a Mac give me an easier life ? Most RoR developers seem to use them and most example tutorials seem to assume I do to.
Thanks for any advice
The simplest answer is you can do RoR development on any of the platforms easily.
Personally, I started doing development in Windows, then switched to VirtualBox on windows running Ubuntu. I now have a MacBook Pro and must say it's the happiest environment so far!
Windows - Reasonably straightforward to install rails, but seemed much slower that other enviroments. Lack of simple console with color highlighting was annoying
Ubuntu - Faster than under windows (even when virtualized!). If you don't know linux, it's a lot less fun, steep learning curve for command line stuff and lots of dependencies to resolve
Mac - Best of both worlds, pretty UI for day to day stuff, awesome command line support, Ruby and RoR run super fast on MacBook Pro.
I don't use a mac, I use linux, but I switched from Windows early in my experience with Rails. Using a mac is way better than using windows. The cheap option is to just dual-boot your windows machine with Ubuntu.
Just get off of windows.
See this for more details:
Getting Ruby on Rails environment working and installing sqlite3
Edit: VirtualBox is also an option for those whose processor supports it.
i would suggest to try out with any linux versions like Ubuntu, centos, fedora...
I think you can use linux version - ubuntu 12.04 because there are some ruby gems that are not working on windows like rubyracer, less-rails.
Install VirtualBox and run an Ubuntu or Redhat virtual linux machine.
I develop in Rails under Windows at work and at home most of the time. There are a few instances where gems won't work or will require a little more work to get running properly. There are also instances where developing on Windows and deploying to Linux/*NIX environment can cause problems, usually involving Windows-specific gems in your Gemfile.lock which aren't compatible on Linux/*NIX.
All-in-all, it's not too much trouble as long as you watch out for the gotchas.
I also use Mac OS X for Rails development and I like the development experience much more than I do on Windows. That being said, I certainly don't need a Mac to be able to develop in Rails effectively.
I also started with Rails development and recently bought myself a MacBook Pro. A Mac has solutions for running Windows, in case you also still need to do development on the Microsoft technology stack. You can install Windows via Bootcamp, which is a built in solution. Or run Windows in a virtual instance with virtualization software like Parallels.
hope this helps,
Anthony
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 looked around the current answers for similar questions but still couldn't find the information I was looking for.
While there are countless guides to setting up rails, it seems there aren't that many which are up to date. The latest installation of Ruby 1.9.2 seems to come with RubyGems but I can't seem to install it by running the command gem install rails
On top of this I've read guides recommending to establish a linux environment. I'm even confused to what database to use "SQLite3" or "MySQL".
My question, is how the heck do I get Rails installed quickly on Windows 7, what database should I use with it and also whether it's worth installing a VM? Any up to date guides would also be appreciated. I'd like to have the most suitable environment to get started.
I started out with Windows, used Ruby/Rails for a month, then decided to go with Rails on Ubuntu under VirtualBox, using Putty to remote to it.
MySQL is installed on Windows (so that the VM doesn't become too slow).
All code is on VBox accessible Windows drive, everything else Rails-related is on Ubuntu.
All this lets me:
Use Ruby/Rails in it's "native" place i.e. *nix
Use my Windows 7 slick (IMO) GUI
Use my BeyondCompare, TortoiseGit
Learn linux (as mentioned below also)
Ask better questions / get more answers in the community (where everyone assumes ;) that you've either got Rails on Linux or a Mac) since everyone seems to be using *nix.
To me, it makes sense to not use Ruby/Rails on Windows, especially since hosting a Rails app will 99.999% be on a linux box. So, you will get to learn linux/Ubuntu and can be better prepared come hosting time. Bonus in resume + you won't be lost when asking questions down the road, and not wonder "is this problem installing this gem because I am using Windows?".
Also, I noticed that running things like rake was 2-3 times faster in Ubuntu than in Windows. And now I think it is good to have learnt linux. I must say linux excels at the command line, and I kind of like using it now. Linux/Ubuntu sucks at GUI (IM very strong O!).
Oh, and for Ruby/Rails on Windows, give Pik a try (it's the Windows version of RVM - Ruby Version Manager).
And just for the record, on Windows, I faced problems with installing RSpec; exceptions in WebBRICK; could not use imagemagick; and other small things I am glad to have forgotten.
The Rails Installer has recently been updated for Windows, and has the support of EngineYard to keep it up to date. But, it looks like it only installs Ruby 1.8.7 at the moment. But, it should be a good starting point.
You can read Engine Yard's announcement, and reasoning for getting the Rails Installer up to date here: http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/introducing-railsinstaller/
The problem with Windows is it's totally different than all the other OS's. Supporting it requires all this if WIN32 else business that's no fun at all, so support lags. And since no self-respecting developer would even want to run Rails on Windows, there's just very little incentive to keep support up to date.
Why not get a hosted Linux VM such as one at Slicehost and run your project there? The advantage of that is it's accessible from anywhere without having to set up port forwarding on your cable modem (assuming you have a static IP.)
Rails on Windows is poorly supported. And even if you can get the basic Rails environment up on Windows, you'll face various problems with many Ruby gems--they aren't tested in the Windows/Rails environment so they often have problems.
Alternatives
I use a windows machine for developing Rails apps. But I never run the apps on my win box. I did it once a couple of years ago but found it to be a waste of time since many ruby gems don't work properly on windows.
Instead, I run Linux on an old PC as my development environment. I use Samba to mount the Linux box's filesystem on windows. Then I can use Windows text editors such as UltraEdit.
Another option that doesn't require a second machine is to load Linux on a secondary partition on your windows box. You can then boot into the Linux os and run Rails there.
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.
I'm a designer and not a coder and having issues with the first install.
I downloaded Rails 1.8.6 and Instant Rails.
I opened a console and tried updating gems. Nothing worked there.
I think I will just delete everything and start over because I'm sure I broke something by now. I was really thinking about buying a Mac today just to get it working.
What do you recommend for:
1. What EXACTLY to download?
2. Steps to take?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
I've been developing with Rails on Windows 7 for over a year and have never experienced any frustrations due to this. These instructions have always worked perfectly for me.
Download and install Ruby 1.8.7
http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/71492/rubyinstaller-1.8.7-p299.exe
Download the latest RubyGems, and extract the file somewhere
http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126
Open the command prompt, cd into the directory you extracted RubyGems too, and do "ruby setub.rb"
On the command line anywhere run "gem install rails"
I have no idea why so many people are anti Rails/Windows. I suppose OS X is easier since it comes with Rails already installed. Linux on the other hand you can easily jack up your environment if you mix up using apt-get and gems to install libraries.
To be honest I'd almost just download VirtualBox and install Ubuntu in it, then develop with Rails on there. Things just work better on *nix systems when it comes to Ruby/Rails/gems/etc. Rails development on Windows is more pain than it needs to be.
Cody's right, but I have more to say than will fit in a comment.
Rails on Windows just pain. You don't have to buy a shiny new Mac (I do like my Mac though). I happen to prefer developing Rails apps on Ubuntu. If you do Rails development for any extended period of time you'll probably want to move to Passenger. Passenger doesn't run on Windows.
My day job is writing .net code and while Mono is great, I wouldn't develop an application targeting a Windows OS on an OS X or Linux machine. I'm not a fanboy by any means - when I decide to take on a new language or framework, I do some research and find out the best platform to use. I don't want to sit and fight with Ruby or Rails because Windows isn't well supported - I'll just go with a *nix based machine and be on my way. When in Rome...