Portable Ruby on Rails environment

Question

I got myself a new 8 gig USB key and I'm looking for a decent solution to have a portable RoR environment to learn on. I did the google on it and found a few possibilities, but I'm curious to hear some real life experiences and opinions. Thanks!

Answer 1

I like InstantRails, very easy to use, no installer, and does not modify your system environment.

Answer 2

Setting up a portable install of Cygwin would be a good choice.

You'll have a full *nix environment which would give you endless possibilities. You could easily have Ruby, Rails, Mongrel (or whatever server of choice) as well as a really good editor at your disposal as well. I would recommend VIM with this Rails specific VIM configuration (fantastic looks and feel!).

I currently have a similar setup running Cygwin off a jump drive. I use it mostly for the bash shell, VIM, and using tail to monitor development log files with its nicely color coded syntax.

Answer 3

Assuming you're on Windows, I'd go for Instant Rails and Netbeans (with a JVM for Netbeans).

Netbeans is a bit heavy-weight, but it supports lots of nice rails focused IDE features and is the best IDE for Rails on Windows IMO.

You'll get all of that on a lot less than 1 gig.

Answer 4

I found this, and I intend to give it a go this evening: Flash Rails