This file documents the steps required to set up a working Rails development environment on a Windows 8.1 machine.
Native development is feasible if you don't need cutting edge Ruby and gems. Windows support is second class when it comes to the latest version of a lot of gems. Some gems (eg. Unicorn) are not able to run on Windows.
You will need to add the /bin directory to your PATH for every installation
Default stack:
- PostgreSQL
- Sublime Text
- Heroku Toolbelt
- Git (not necessary if you're using RailsInstaller below)
Ruby: If Ruby 1.9.3 is adequate for your project needs:
- RailsInstaller - Includes Git and Devkit OR If you need Ruby > 1.9.3
- RubyInstaller - Bare Ruby installation
- DevKit - Some gems need this to build native extensions upon installation
- Pik - Good to have if you need to run multiple versions of Ruby
Parent
- VirtualBox
- Vagrant with rails-dev-box as the base box. We will use rsync instead of NFS to speed Vagrant up as Windows does not support NFS
- Cygwin to provide rsync and the bash shell.
- Note that rsync is only one way, so a separate non-rsync vagrant instance will need to be set up to make configuration changes to the virtual machine. Do not rsync a folder under \User<username> as the permissions on those folders do not allow them to be read by the guest machine.
- Cygwin may screw up your public keys for git (fix) Getting ssh-agent to run
Child
- Update system packages and install curl
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl
- RVM to manage multiple Ruby versions
curl -SSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
user$ echo "source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" >> ~/.bash_profile