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Comment by alnayyir | Hacker News Reader

I was speaking in RAM, not the disk-space of a VM. I didn't know the context of what you were looking for.

Is there some reason you can't accomplish this using RVM and a dev database? Any specific software that makes you think it isn't practical to do so?

Virtualization seems a little heavy duty given the options for sandboxing python and ruby apps these days.

Edit: You really really don't want to cope with the raw horror and pain of a minimalist kernel that doesn't provide any of the things you usually take for granted.

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Everyone on our team carries a Macbook; I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it.

I wasn't reading you carefully enough before; I don't care at all about RAM size. I care how big the distro is to download.

You could look into how Instiki (http://www.instiki.org/show/HomePage) packages itself?

It provides a Mac OS X app that includes all of its dependencies in the app - including Rails.

If you're patient, eventually MacRuby will support Rails and can generate compiled .app bundles. But if you need it NOW, I'd look into how Instiki works.

Joyent came out with such a product in 2007, called Slingshot. I remember it being quite slow (…for what was supposed to be a desktop app), but functional.

http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot/

>Everyone on our team carries a Macbook

I work on a macbook too.

> I need "click this to start the app up" levels of simplicity, or nobody will use it.

Is that a political issue or have there been questionable hiring decisions by someone?

When I'm talking about gift-wrapping it with RVM, literally all they'll have to run is a well-made shell script to fire it up.

http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/41816-howto-open-termina...

Should do the trick, although you'll want to test it in Finder yourself.

I can't come up with anything easier than double-clicking on a shell script.

This ignores Ruby Dependency Hell, which is why I'd want to use VMs in the first place.

RVM exists specifically to solve ruby dependency hell. Have you ever made a sandboxed app with it before?

this is really the right answer, as it is the exact solution given what tools are available for solving the problem of managing development. but what is the difference between the startup time in this video, and the start up time of an ide?

i can see a developer workflow where you start up the vm, create your example function or class of what you are solving, close the vm, and let some script find the new file, check everything in, etc...

i don't feel it would be much different than having a standard install of an ide for a group of devs, but in this instance you could have all the customization of an entire OS, plus creating a single app that people can throw away and start from square one, or even check in the whole OS install as a version?

i agree this is a lot of overhead, but i think it is okay someone is exploring this, i feel it is very interesting, and a pattern of abstraction we should consider more. this is how i see the small EC2 images i've been playing with.

>video

What are you talking about?

> i think it is okay someone is exploring this

Not on the job, do it at home.

> i feel it is very interesting

What is? I'm having a really hard time understanding you.

>a pattern of abstraction

What pattern, what abstraction? An abstraction is a distinct singular entity, a pattern is multiple related datum with a a correlation in form or substance.

1. video - there is a video in the original post 2. job - i have to explore on the job all the time, i don't have the stuff at home 3. creating a vm for making dev environments, what i was thinking this part of the thread is about 4. abstracting away the entire os setup and seeing that combination of os+app as just an app, i would consider that an abstraction, and not just a pattern, but the pattern being trying to think along these things of what can be abstracted in this way. not trying to combine or confuse the terms.

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