What you'll need installed on your laptop
As a minimum you will need Ruby, RubyGem, Rails and SQLite installed.
I would recommend the following versions:
- Ruby 1.8.6
- Rails 2.0.2
Installing Ruby and RubyGem
Full instructions for installing Ruby on Windows, Linux and Mac OS can be found here on ruby-lang.org.
If you are using Windows I would suggest downloading and installing Ruby using the One Click Installer which includes Ruby and RubyGem.
You can check that Ruby is installed by typing the command:
C:\> ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
Check the version that gets installed:
C:\> gem -v
0.9.4
You need 1.0.1 or newer. If you have an older version, you can update with the command line:
C:\> gem update --system
Installing Rails and additional gems
Once Ruby and RubyGem are installed Rails can be then be installed using the following command:
C:\> gem install rails
I would also recommend the following gems:
Installing SQLite
Download and unzip the SQLite DLL and SQLite command-line program in to /windows/system32 or another folder in your PATH.
And then install the Ruby SQLite bindings:
C:\> gem install sqlite3-ruby
IDE
You can use a basic text editor to program in Ruby and develop web applications with RubyOnRails but its nice to have syntax highlighting at the very least. Choice of IDE is very much a personal choice, but my two favorites are Aptana and the Ruby edition of Netbeans.
If you have any problems please get in touch in plenty of time before the event and we will be happy to help.
