What's the best open source Ruby on Rails project to learn from?

Question

I am a .net developer who would like to learn more about Ruby on Rails. I have followed the 5-minute(?!) marketware tutorials, etc, out on the rails site, but would like to learn more by reading real live code.

So what's the best open source resource for learning about RoR in depth?

EDIT: A slight clarification, I am a .net developer working on a Mac, and plan to develop for RoR on OS X (at least one of the answers assumed I am on Windows, so I am now assuming my choice of platform matters in answering this question).

Answer 1

You can find in RubyForge many good and active projects...

Answer 2

I would recommend one of the books that walk you through the process of creating a complex application (e.g. social networking site) from scratch in Ruby on Rails. The complete source code can be found on their websites.

My favorite book is RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails.

Answer 3

Ruby on Rails itself is open source and you can learn quite a bit about Ruby first and Rails in general by looking at it.

Rosters (http://rosters.rubyforge.org/) and TeachMate (http://teachmate.org/opensource) are both fairly simple (in understandability of ideas and functionality) and offer a good range of features that should help you see how some people are doing RoR.

I should also add that there are free screencasts about rails here at RailsCasts.com (http://railscasts.com/).

Answer 4

One approach that might be helpful is to check out some of the rails apps found in the projects that are forked the most often on Github. Here's a few:

• Inoshi - The open source social networking platform in Ruby on Rails from the author of RailsSpace
• Mephisto - A popular blogging engine.
• Radiant - Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams.

Also, if you're new to Rails, you might be new to Git, in which case you'll need to install Git before you can pull the source to any of those projects from GitHub. Since you're a .Net developer, I'm guessing you're on Windows. Here's a helpful guide: Getting Started with Git and GitHub on Windows.

Answer 5

I'd also recommend the beast forum:

http://github.com/rubyonbr/beast/tree

Answer 6

The Redmine issue tracking system. Pretty impressive issue tracking system with SCM integration.

Redmine

Answer 7

On my drive I have a number of open-source Rails apps I have used for reference while learning Rails as also sanity checking that I am doing things the "rails-way":

• Depot (from the Agile Dev with Rails book)
• Beast (forum)
• Mephisto (blogging)
• Radiant (cms)
• Substruct (ecommerce)
• Tracks (to-do list and task manager)

Beast and Mephisto are particularly valuable as the have been developed by high-profile members of the Rails community.

Answer 8

I'm on the same road so I can recommend this book:

Rails for .Net Developers

It teaches the basics of RoR, without them it's hard to really understand code from open source projects.

Answer 9

http://www.railspassion.com gives overview of open source rails applications, from which you can kick start your rails development.