5 ms·

2009 Rubyist's guide to a Mac OS X development environment

63 points by jwilliams 18y ago

mshafrir 18y ago
excellent guide, will be running through it tonight
Hates_ 18y ago
I read this, spent most of the day struggling with Vim and then went back to Textmate defeated. I still can't understand why I should move to Vim/Emacs when I spend 99.99% of my time infront of a Mac.
- there 18y ago
  then don't. use whatever you're productive in, not what some silly weblog entry says you should.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  Emacs and Vim have ridiculous learning curves. Their practitioners wouldn't be so fanatic about them if anyone could unlock their powers in a day. However if you're ready to make a real commitment to learning it, you might get a great return on investment down the line. Learning about all the great programmers who favorite those editors might give you enough faith to give it a serious try.
  - kuvkir 18y ago
    I wouldn't say Vim has a ridiculous learning curve, it took me about 5 minutes to read through vimtutor and get started with vim. However, being a vim adept for a long time hasn't stopped me from switching to textmate when it came to developing rails apps. ;)
  - gord 18y ago
    disclaimer - Im a daily vim user. I think the {derivative of the} learning curve has a long tail.. I keep finding new cool things I can do with it, I guess emacs is the same, or even more so as you can start hacking lisp... I recommend printing out a cheat sheet with the most common commands - you can start small and get work done. Things like <esc> :E for browsing files is handy and youll forget them at first. I map a hotkey for :bn :bp so I can flick through the open buffers. Good tuts on the web. It packs a punch. oh, on ubuntu youll need to install vim-full sudo apt-get install vim-full .. thats annoying, but you'll be crippled without it.
davidmathers 18y ago
My version: Git: sudo port install git-core Aliases: do not want. sudo port install bash-completion MySQL: sudo port install mysql5 +server Capistrano: sudo gem install vlad ImageMagick: sudo port... Quicksilver: out with the old, in with http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ I don't get the anti-macports attitude. Why go through the hassle of downloading a bunch of stuff when it can be just a command line away?
- hbien 18y ago
  For me, it's b/c of the bad experiences I had with it. Packages never compiled correctly, I always got error messages which I'd google around for. It would take over an hour to finally install MySQL, Subversion, SQLite3, etc... I must be an idiot if I can't do 'sudo port install PACKAGE' correctly. Then I got a new laptop and just used the .pkg installer, way easier and faster.
- gcv 18y ago
  Indeed. MacPorts has the additional advantage of using upgradable and removable packages, rather than polluting /usr/local (or worse, /usr) with unmaintainable detritus of various .pkg installers. MacPorts packages do occasionally fail to build, but (1) the maintainers do respond to tickets opened in their Trac system, and (2) most problems I saw had to do with Python packages, and MacPorts handling of Python apps seems to have improved recently.
  - YuriNiyazov 18y ago
    Indeed, I now have a new rule: MacPorts provides everything I need except for Ruby and Python, which are always compiled from source into a separate location where they can pollute all they want.
bk 18y ago
For me: Ubuntu/Debian VM image = same env for dev and deploy. Fewer moving parts.
hbien 18y ago
I gotta say, that vim syntax highlighting theme looks awesome.
- otto 18y ago
  Do you know where the vim configuration files are in macvim? I'm curious to see how they did that. http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master
jamesbritt 18y ago
I recently bought a Mac Mini and since the installed version of Ruby was a year old I opted to just install from source. I do the same on my Ubuntu boxen. Is there an argument for using pre-packaged, but not current, installations? I like the convenience of tools like apt for many things, but prefer to go to the source for certain key items.

63 points by jwilliams 18y ago

excellent guide, will be running through it tonight

I read this, spent most of the day struggling with Vim and then went back to Textmate defeated. I still can't understand why I should move to Vim/Emacs when I spend 99.99% of my time infront of a Mac.

there 18y ago
then don't. use whatever you're productive in, not what some silly weblog entry says you should.
Hexstream 18y ago
Emacs and Vim have ridiculous learning curves. Their practitioners wouldn't be so fanatic about them if anyone could unlock their powers in a day. However if you're ready to make a real commitment to learning it, you might get a great return on investment down the line. Learning about all the great programmers who favorite those editors might give you enough faith to give it a serious try.
- kuvkir 18y ago
  I wouldn't say Vim has a ridiculous learning curve, it took me about 5 minutes to read through vimtutor and get started with vim. However, being a vim adept for a long time hasn't stopped me from switching to textmate when it came to developing rails apps. ;)
- gord 18y ago
  disclaimer - Im a daily vim user. I think the {derivative of the} learning curve has a long tail.. I keep finding new cool things I can do with it, I guess emacs is the same, or even more so as you can start hacking lisp... I recommend printing out a cheat sheet with the most common commands - you can start small and get work done. Things like <esc> :E for browsing files is handy and youll forget them at first. I map a hotkey for :bn :bp so I can flick through the open buffers. Good tuts on the web. It packs a punch. oh, on ubuntu youll need to install vim-full sudo apt-get install vim-full .. thats annoying, but you'll be crippled without it.

davidmathers 18y ago

My version: Git: sudo port install git-core Aliases: do not want. sudo port install bash-completion MySQL: sudo port install mysql5 +server Capistrano: sudo gem install vlad ImageMagick: sudo port... Quicksilver: out with the old, in with http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ I don't get the anti-macports attitude. Why go through the hassle of downloading a bunch of stuff when it can be just a command line away?

hbien 18y ago
For me, it's b/c of the bad experiences I had with it. Packages never compiled correctly, I always got error messages which I'd google around for. It would take over an hour to finally install MySQL, Subversion, SQLite3, etc... I must be an idiot if I can't do 'sudo port install PACKAGE' correctly. Then I got a new laptop and just used the .pkg installer, way easier and faster.
gcv 18y ago
Indeed. MacPorts has the additional advantage of using upgradable and removable packages, rather than polluting /usr/local (or worse, /usr) with unmaintainable detritus of various .pkg installers. MacPorts packages do occasionally fail to build, but (1) the maintainers do respond to tickets opened in their Trac system, and (2) most problems I saw had to do with Python packages, and MacPorts handling of Python apps seems to have improved recently.
- YuriNiyazov 18y ago
  Indeed, I now have a new rule: MacPorts provides everything I need except for Ruby and Python, which are always compiled from source into a separate location where they can pollute all they want.

bk 18y ago

For me: Ubuntu/Debian VM image = same env for dev and deploy. Fewer moving parts.

hbien 18y ago

I gotta say, that vim syntax highlighting theme looks awesome.

otto 18y ago
Do you know where the vim configuration files are in macvim? I'm curious to see how they did that. http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master

jamesbritt 18y ago

I recently bought a Mac Mini and since the installed version of Ruby was a year old I opted to just install from source. I do the same on my Ubuntu boxen. Is there an argument for using pre-packaged, but not current, installations? I like the convenience of tools like apt for many things, but prefer to go to the source for certain key items.