How to Install Ruby, Rails 2.x, MySQL, SVN, then setup Rails 2.x Application, Configure the database, Run the Rake Tasks, Install plugins and, finally run RSpec for Models on your Local Windows System

A.) How to setup a Rails 2.x Application on your local system:–
[NOTE: The following steps are for Windows OS environment]

1. Setup Ruby and Rails on the local system:-
   • Install Ruby on Windows:
     The easiest way is using the One-Click-Installer
     Once the installation is complete, check that path to ruby\bin directory is in your PATH variable (Run “cmd”, then type “path” at the prompt and check that the path is there.
     The great thing about the one-click installer is that it comes with Ruby Gems, Scite pre-installed. The thing to watch out for is that one-click installer does not have the very latest version of Ruby, so when you are reading Ruby Docs, make sure you know which version of Ruby you have (run “ruby -v” in the command prompt)
   • Installing MySQL on Windows:
     First, download and run the latest MySQL. After the files are unzipped, an Instance Config should run automatically (you can run it manually at any time from your MySQL bin directory just run “MySQLInstanceConfig.exe”). Then go through the step as directed.
   • Install Rails on Windows:
     Run the following command: gem install rails –-include-dependencies
     (If this command gives you an error, you do not have the latest version of gems installed. Run “gem -v” to check for the version of RubyGems. It should be 0.9.4. Otherwise, you may probably need to update RubyGems as well.: gem update –system [NOTE: It is recommended that RubyGems version 0.9.4 is used as Rails 2.x had some issue with version 0.9.5. Though this issue had been subsequently resolved]
   • Installing SVN on Windows:
     We use the TortoiseSVN SVN client on our local machine to use SVN.
     We have SVN version on our local system: 1.4.3
     The SVN version installed on the Server, which we were using, can be found by running the command on the server: svn –version
2. Create a rails 2.x application:-
   SQLite3 is the new default database. So when a rails 2.x application is created, by default the database support, which comes preconfigured, is for SQLite3. So to create a rails 2.x application with MySql support preconfigured, you simply need to run the following command: rails -d mysql testapp
   This will create the skeleton structure for the rails 2.x application with mysql database adapter.
3. Configuring the database for the application:-
   Now a database.yml file is created in the /config under your application root folder. You need to set the development, production and test database names there. Also you need to put in the database password,if there exist any,So for your database in this .yml file. This password is same as the one you put in while installing mysql on your machine.
   • So for a rails application, database.yml file configuration is as follows:
     development:
     database: testapp_development
     adapter: mysql
     encoding: utf8
     username: root
     password: mypassword [Note: password is set here if any]
     socket: /tmp/mysql.sock [NOTE: Similarly for production and test database]
4. To create the database on the local machine:-
   Run the following command: rake db:create:all
   The above command will create all the three database i.e. development, production and test database as set in the database.yml file
   If you want to start from scratch, you can do rake db:drop:all And in the middle of development we can do rake db:rollback to undo the latest migration file.
5. To seed the database with initial database:-
   Run the following command: rake db:populate
   This will populated the database with initial data as written in populate rake file. Also a rake task called rebuild has been created so that it becomes easy to do the above steps from dropping a db, re-creating the db,running all the migration and then finally populating it with the initial seed data.
   Run the following command:rake db:rebuild. [NOTE:This rebuild rake task will easily do all the above db related steps. See my previous post for “How to create a rake db:rebuild task”
6. To run your Rails 2.x application on the local system:-
   Need to first go to root folder of your rails application. For example: F:/Projects/testapp/trunk
   Then run the following command: ruby script/server
   This will run the application in development mode. To run in production mode: ruby script/server -e production
7. To install rspec plugin for rails application:-
   Run the following commands at the command line:
   ruby script/plugin install http://rspec.rubyforge.org/svn/tags/REL_1_1_3/rspec
   ruby script/plugin install
   and http://rspec.rubyforge.org/svn/tags/REL_1_1_3/rspec_on_rails
   Once the plugin is installed, you must bootstrap your palnglue rails app with RSpec. Stand in the root of your Rails app and run: ruby script/generate rspec
   This will generate the various files needed to use RSpec with Rails.
8. To run the rspec with rake on the local machine:-
   Run the following command at the root folder of the application: rake spec
   or run specs with scripts/spec command: ruby script/spec spec

B.) How to install a Plugin for Application:–

Stand in the root of your rails app and run:

ruby script/plugin install <here the url path of the plugin to be installed>

C.) Running the RSpec test cases for Models:–

Run using the command:

rake spec:models

D.) Running the RCov:–

Coverage tests can be run using the command:

rake spec:rcov

How to freeze Rails application

Rails is a moving target. Its core is constantly changing. So sometimes it is advisable to “freeze” your rails application so that even if you upgrade and install the latest new version of Rails, it does not break anything in your application.
So first change to your rails application directory:

cd testapp

Then run the following command to freeze this application to the version of Rails that is currently installed on your system:

rake rails:freeze:gems

Now to Unfreezing Rails:

rake rails:unfreeze

Now say you want to freeze to a different version of Rails.No worries. You can freeze to almost any version. This is how:

rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-2

And to freeze Rails to the current development version:

rake rails:freeze:edge

Freezing helps us when we need to upgrade.For example, we have a Rails application of version 2.0.0 and froze it to that version. Now when Rails version 2.0.2 came out and say you wanted to upgarde, we can upgrade the frozen version of Rails by:

rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-2

Now suppose after upgrading, you found that your application is not working properly with this new upgrade. So what do you do? Well not to worry. You can easily downgrade back to the previous version:

rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-0

Steps to Restart a Server on a Linux (ubuntu) Box for Rails, Mongrel and Merb stack

Actually the title should read as

“Restarting Rails, Merb (a file upload framework) and Mongrel (a lightweight Web Server) Cluster”

Well this is also more of a reminder to self. So here goes the steps as follows:

Step 1: First connect to the Box, where the application is running, using any telnet application like Putty. It can be downloaded from this page. You need to put in the login credentials. For example login: vivanista and its password.

Step 2: Then you need to go to the ‘app’ folder. The command to write at cmd line is:-

cd app

Step 3: Then You need to update the application folder with the latest files from SVN repository.The command to write at cmd line is:-

svn update

Step 4: NOw we need to kill the Mreb process which is running on the server. For that we need to find the Mreb’s process id using the ‘grep’ cmd. The command to write at cmd line is:-

ps ax|grep merb

Step 5: Now you get the process ids i.e. pids of the Mreb you need to kill before restart. You need to kill the pid which has ruby folder as its initial folder in the text. The command to write at cmd line is:-

kill -9 (here the Merb pid to kill)

Step 6: Again run the ‘grep’ cmd of Step 4 to check if the Merb process has been killed properly

Step 7: Now restart Mongrel Cluster.(Note: Advantage of using cluster instead of single instance mongrel server is that it helps in load balancing and hence better performance of the server).The command to write at cmd line is:-

mongrel_rails cluster::restart

Step 8: Then go to the merbuploader folder to restart Merb. So you will be in ‘/app/merbuploader /’. To go ‘merbuploader’ folder, the cmd is:-

cd merbuploader

Step 9: Now to restart Merb, the cmd is:-

merb -d

Step 10: Now to exit the server and putty application, the cmd is:-

exit