CSCI E-168

NOTE: Rails 2.3.3 only: Note specification of version number in gem install below; for more information, see https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994-ruby-on-rails/tickets/3144-undefined-method-for-string-ror-234

For Windows, the fundamental requirements for the course are Ruby 1.9.1, Sqlite3 3.6.17, Cygwin (latest), and Ruby on Rails 2.3.3. Assignment 0 has the full list.

LAST MINUTE NOTE: When you are picking packages during Cygwin setup, please also pick “git”. This is not in the screencast, but you would do this in the same UI where you are selecting ssh and zip.

If you intend to watch the screencast, I’d suggest that you print out this page and follow along. To watch, click: http://e168f09.plugh.org/extras/screencasts/windows-setup.html

To set up under Windows, you’ll need to:

1. Install Ruby 1.9 with the Windows One-Click Installer. As of 16-Aug-2009, the best version for 1.9 is “Preview2,” at http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167&release_id=38052.After installing Ruby 1.9, you will need to put C:\ruby19\bin into your system’s path.To add a directory to your path: Click “Start,” then “Control Panel.” In newer versions of Control Panel, you click “Performance and Maintenance,” and then “See basic information about your computer.” On older versions of the Control Panel (the “classic view”), you click the “System” icon. Now you should se a panel titled “System Properties.” Pick the “Advanced” tab, then click the “Environment Variables” button. Go down to “System variables,” and select “Path.” Click the “Edit” button. Now, for the “Variable value,” go to the beginning of that input field, and type: “C:\ruby19\bin;” (without the quotation marks — and make sure to include the semi-colon, which is used to separate entries in your path. Now click OK, OK, and OK.For those already using Ruby: If you already have Ruby 1.8.6 or 1.8.7 installed on your Windows machine, notice that the one-click installer puts Ruby 1.9 into the directory C:\ruby19. It shouldn’t conflict with your existing setup; the current version of Ruby you’ll get will depend on how your PATH is set. Gems are maintained separately for each version of Ruby.To verify:

   ruby -v
   

   You should see a summary of the version of your Ruby installation:

   
ruby 1.9.1p243 (2009-07-16 revision 24175) i386-mingw32


2. You will need to install Sqlite3 from http://sqlite.org/download.html. See “Precompiled Binaries for Windows.” In addition to the main program in file sqlite-3_6_17.zip, you will also want the DLL in file sqlitedll-3_6_17.zip. So, download both, unzip, and put the contents into, for instance, C:\sqlite-3_6_17.As for Ruby, you should put the directory C:\sqlite-3_6_17 into the system path.To verify:

   sqlite3 -version
   

   To exit from Sqlite3, press control C.

3. Additionally, you should install Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/). Cygwin provides a Unix emulation layer for Windows.When you install Cygwin, make sure to include the packages for zip (you will need this even if you have a Windows-based Zip program), and openssh. For these additional components, you will see them if you click the “View” button until it says “Full” next to it, and then change the “Skip” icon until it shows a version number. Zip is under the name “zip: Info-ZIP compression utility.”The Cygwin bin directory (by default, C:\cygwin\bin) should go in your path.NOTE: The names of some Cygwin utilities (for example, find) conflict with Windows programs that do similar things. If things start to behave unexpectly, remove the Cygwin bin directory from your path. You might consider putting selected programs (such as zip) into the Ruby bin directory or someplace else on your PATH.To verify:

   zip --help
   

4. Finally, install Rails and the Sqlite3 gem:

   gem install rails -v 2.3.3
   gem install sqlite3-ruby
   

   To verify:

   See the very end of the screencast for a quick demo of creating a Rails application and then browsing into it.