Supporting the UW Web

I previously published instructions for setting up a Ruby Gems repository on your own account, but I neglected to include the one special step that will let a Ruby on Rails application use that gem repository.

Now that step has been added to the end of the Ruby Gems on Your Account instructions.

I know we are running an out-of-date installation of Ruby and Rails, but we have requested a new one. Keep your fingers crossed.

Our Web & Web dev hosts
ruby 1.8.4
ruby on rails 1.1.6

Current stable versions
ruby 1.8.6
ruby on rails 2.0.2

Today I got a Rails application working properly on the Alumni server. The application is Tracks, which implements some very specific type of todo tracking. I installed a 5.0.x version of MySQL, since Rails didn’t seem to interact well with a 4.1.x version I already had installed. I altered the .htaccess and dispatch.cgi files in the public/ folder, and made some adjustments to the default DATETIME values, which apparently weren’t compatible with MySQL.

Both of the Rails applications I’ve looked at so far have been intended for use with SQLite. I’m used to using MySQL as the database back-end of web applications, but SQLite may be a better choice with Rails applications.

The application can be accessed on my alumni account: Tracks login .

Log in with the username “guest” and the password “12345″.

Ruby and Rails are now installed on the Alumni web and web development hosts.

Installing Rails applications is a bit different from PHP or Perl, so we might want to write up some instructions for how to get them working.

I ran the ‘rails’ command to test the installation and created this directory.

The next step will be to understand how to install Rails applications created by other people and make them work.