2009 Rubyist's guide to a Mac OS X development environment | Hacker News Reader

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

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63 pointsjwilliams14 comments

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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/

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

then don't. use whatever you're productive in, not what some silly weblog entry says you should.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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.

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

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

excellent guide, will be running through it tonight

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