Me Dev, You Jane

The Rails 3 release is expected any day now but many of you, like me, may not have the patience to wait until release to start fiddling with it. So why not take the time and do some Ruby 1.9 testing at the same time. We have all been delaying the 1.9 switch but the fact is that 1.9.1 is the current stable version of Ruby and we should all really be using it for new projects. Sure there may be some gems we may need that are not 1.9 compatible yet but that is just a perfect opportunity for you to learn the new features of the current Ruby release. I can think of no better Ruby 1.9 learning tool for you than updating that gem, that you need, to a 1.9 compatible status. Also we should always remember when we build our applications that we probably saved ourselves days and even weeks by using work that others have done and given away. The least we can do is to spend an hour fixing that bug.

EDIT: Some people prefer installing using RVM(Ruby Version Manager). I personally am a source guy but feel free to check the comments below for the RVM install info and skipping to the Rails part.

EDIT 2: Rails is now available as a pre-release gem and the rails installation step here is out of date.

There are many tutorials out there on how to install Ruby 1.9 but most of them involve installing the binaries with a "*19" suffix leaving you with 2 names for ruby. One called ruby and other called ruby19. I really dislike this methods as I see multiple ways how that can be annoying. I prefer my Ruby being called ruby so I usually install it in some directory that I can easily switch to by adding or removing a directory from the path.

So lets start by creating that installation directory. I also give my user the ownership of it. That may not be a smart idea for a production machine but as this is your local dev machine it's just handy that you never have to think about privileges when installing gems and so on:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/ruby19
sudo chown $USER /opt/ruby19

Now lets get the latest Ruby source and install to our new Ruby directory:

cd ~/Temp  
curl ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.1-p376.tar.gz | tar zx
cd ruby-1.9.1-p376
./configure --prefix=/opt/ruby19 --enable-shared
make && make install

All done. Now you should have ruby 1.9 set up and all you need to do is add it's bin directory to the path with the command export PATH=/opt/ruby19/bin:$PATH and you should be set to go. For convenience I usually open up ~/.bash_profile and insert to it the line:

alias ruby19ify="export PATH=/opt/ruby19/bin:$PATH"

That way whenever I open up a new terminal it will be using the default Ruby 1.8 version. But to switch to 1.9 i just run the command ruby19ify and my terminal session will use our custom ruby version and the 1.9 gem scripts. If you wish to fully switch to the new version simply add this to the path permanently. Check your Ruby install by running the command ruby -v and you should be greeted with:

ruby 1.9.1p376 (2009-12-07 revision 26041) [i386-darwin10.2.0]

Now before we install Rails we should update RubyGems to the latest version with the command:

gem update --system

While we used the Temp directory for the Ruby source files we really want to put the Rails source to your code directory as you are going to want to update this on a regular basis. The installation is dead simple:

cd *SomePlaceYouStoreCode*
git clone git://github.com/rails/rails.git
cd rails
git submodule init
git submodule update
rake install

Now every time you wish to update Rails(do it at least weekly) you simply cd to the source directory and perform the following commands:

git pull git submodule update rake install

And you should be set. Check that you have Rails 3 with the command rails -v, install your gems such as sqlite3, and start hacking away at rails. If you either successfully or unsuccessfully install a gem help other by reporting it at http://isitruby19.com/ as needed. If it fails then check the source code and see if you can't assist the community by fixing it. Do a few of those and, who knows, you might end up as a Ruby superstar like Ryan Bates or Geoffrey Grosenbach.

Remember that there are some big changes in Rails 3 that you need to be aware of. You may for example be surprised if you open up config/environment.rb as it is all but empty now. Gems are now set up using the Gemfile file in the root and there is a new file called config/application.rb for your configuration that are not environment bound. For a great collection of Rails 3 info visit the RailsNotes site.

And remember. Fork and Patch.