Installing Ruby on Rails on Windows 7 - quick and easy

Question

Since I had so many issues installing RoR on my laptop with Windows 7, I thought I would share my steps with you. Many people tell you to use InstantRails. I did that one too, but the option below worked best for me.

1. Download and install Ruby 1.8.7 http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/71492/rubyinstaller-1.8.7-p299.exe

2. Download the latest RubyGems, and extract the file somewhere http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126

3. Using your console (type cmd in your search to open it) cd into the directory you pit RubyGems and type: "ruby setup.rb" (without the quotes).

It will take a minute and then if all went well, you will see lots of lines of text.

1. Then in your console type: "gem install rails" (without the quotes)

It will take a minute and then if all went well, you will see lots of lines of text.

1. Then in your console type: "gem install sqlite3-ruby" (without the quotes)

It will take a minute and then if all went well, you will see lots of lines of text. This is updating your database, which is what sqlite3 is.

Then you should have a nice install and be ready to ride the rails!

There are many tutorials out there but I bought this book: Agile Web Development with Rails (3) -

I first bought Simply Rails 2 and even chatted with the author a little. Simply Rails 2 was a good fit if I stayed with InstantRails. He really explains everything well if you are a designer (like me) and are taking longer to grasp the coding side of programming.

Are there any steps after this that you would like to share? Is this helpful?

Note - Thanks to Zachary at this url http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3473871/installing-ruby-on-rails-for-windows-7-up-to-date for helping me get started.

Editor worth mentioning (but not free) - RubyMine http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/

Answer 1

Installing git and TortoiseGIT.

Answer 2

InstantRails 2.0 is from 2007 and is thus sorely outdated. It still is weird how there remain a lot of users that keep starting with that.

I would always recommend doing the following:

• use the latest version from Rubyinstaller.org (now they are 1.8.7p302)

• there is no need to install the rubygems package seperately, it is included in the rubyinstaller (so also in the one you used). You can just run the executable and the commands ruby -v and gem -v should work. You might want to do a gem update --system to be safe.

• also install the devkit! it allows you to install gems that need to compile binary code (like thin).

• install a common set of windows gems for your pleasure. I have a batch-file written up in this post.

• install git

• install an editor of your choice (Netbeans which is free, or use Rubymine which is awesome!)

Have fun! :)