RubyOnRails on slackware-12.1

On a bit of a break from school (the month of May), i figured to keep the spirit going and learn a language, so i have been reading up on Ruby and Rails. The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide

to have a sandbox for my exploration, i had to get certain aspects of this working on my machine. while ruby-1.8.6 is in the Slackware-12.1 base, the fcgi, mod_fcgi, rubygems and rails was not. so i tasked myself to contribute what I found.

first

:: fcgi

i have made available a SlackBuild to use for fastCGI and mod_fcgi, on http://hashbangbash.com/pub/src/SlackBuilds/fcgi/, so for this from your command line do

  
  $> svn co http://hashbangbash.com/pub/src/SlackBuilds/fcgi/
  $> cd fcgi/
  $> . fcgi.info && wget $DOWNLOAD
  $> export $(grep DOWNLOAD README)
  $> sudo sh fcgi.SlackBuild
  $> sudo installpkg /tmp/fgci-2.4.0-i486-1_SBo.tgz
  
  

and include in your /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

  Listen 8080
  

second

:: rubygems

rubygems is the Official package manager for Ruby. Their Website

their current stable is 1.1.1, so

  
  $> wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/35283/rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
  $> tar xzvf rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
  $> cd rubygems-1.1.1
  $> sudo ruby setup.rb
  $> sudo gem update --system
  
  

i have not cleanly gotten a rubygems SlackBuild going, because the ‘setup.rb’ builds and installs to the directory of the ruby excutable used to call it, so if ruby is in $PATH at /usr/bin, thats where it will install. so the –prefix= and DESTDIR are not as easily utilized. :/

third

:: rails

pretty straight foward, this will install these gems in a ruby sub-directory,

  
  $> gem install rails --include dependencies
  
  

fourth

:: httpd stuff

add to the /etc/httpd/httpd.conf of /etc/httpd/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf the section for your website, substitute for you own paths.

  <VirtualHost *:8080>
      DocumentRoot /var/www/htdocs/rails/new_project/public
      ServerName rails.batts.lan
      ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/new_project-error_log
      CustomLog /var/log/httpd/new_project-access_log common
      Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
      RewriteEngine On
      <Directory /var/www/htdocs/rails/new_project/public>
          AllowOverride all
          Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  

and then make your website directory `On a bit of a break from school (the month of May), i figured to keep the spirit going and learn a language, so i have been reading up on Ruby and Rails. The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide

to have a sandbox for my exploration, i had to get certain aspects of this working on my machine. while ruby-1.8.6 is in the Slackware-12.1 base, the fcgi, mod_fcgi, rubygems and rails was not. so i tasked myself to contribute what I found.

first

:: fcgi

i have made available a SlackBuild to use for fastCGI and mod_fcgi, on http://hashbangbash.com/pub/src/SlackBuilds/fcgi/, so for this from your command line do

  
  $> svn co http://hashbangbash.com/pub/src/SlackBuilds/fcgi/
  $> cd fcgi/
  $> . fcgi.info && wget $DOWNLOAD
  $> export $(grep DOWNLOAD README)
  $> sudo sh fcgi.SlackBuild
  $> sudo installpkg /tmp/fgci-2.4.0-i486-1_SBo.tgz
  
  

and include in your /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

  Listen 8080
  

second

:: rubygems

rubygems is the Official package manager for Ruby. Their Website

their current stable is 1.1.1, so

  
  $> wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/35283/rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
  $> tar xzvf rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
  $> cd rubygems-1.1.1
  $> sudo ruby setup.rb
  $> sudo gem update --system
  
  

i have not cleanly gotten a rubygems SlackBuild going, because the ‘setup.rb’ builds and installs to the directory of the ruby excutable used to call it, so if ruby is in $PATH at /usr/bin, thats where it will install. so the –prefix= and DESTDIR are not as easily utilized. :/

third

:: rails

pretty straight foward, this will install these gems in a ruby sub-directory,

  
  $> gem install rails --include dependencies
  
  

fourth

:: httpd stuff

add to the /etc/httpd/httpd.conf of /etc/httpd/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf the section for your website, substitute for you own paths.

  <VirtualHost *:8080>
      DocumentRoot /var/www/htdocs/rails/new_project/public
      ServerName rails.batts.lan
      ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/new_project-error_log
      CustomLog /var/log/httpd/new_project-access_log common
      Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
      RewriteEngine On
      <Directory /var/www/htdocs/rails/new_project/public>
          AllowOverride all
          Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  

and then make your website directory`

fifth

:: rails’ing it up

from here you are kind of own your own,

with ‘pwd’ as your rails base directory, you can scaffold up a rough framework, in my case i am using a mysql database, so

  
  $> pwd 
  /var/www/htdocs/rails/
  $> rails -d mysql new_project
  $> cd new_project
  $> vi config/database.yml
  
  

and change the database information to your database host, name, user, and pass.

and read the README in that directory, and read the ‘./script/generate –help’

also, a gotcha, ensure the space you are usind (test, production, development), matches the RAILS_ENV in the httpd opts.

cheers,

vb