August 11, 2005

Rolling with Ruby on Rails on Mac OS X Tiger

Outdated Information

The last time this post was updated, it was 17 years old. I wouldn’t recommend using the instructions below on anything but a Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”.

I’ve found myself helping a few people get up and running with Ruby on Rails over the last month, mainly due to my Ruby on Rails installer package. I thought it might be a good idea to document installing and setting up rails from end to end on Mac OS X, given the difficulties some people are encountering along the way.

Prerequisites

  • You should install the Xcode Tools package (it’s on your Tiger installer disc) before starting the instructions below - I’ve had reports of Rails working without the Xcode tools, but it’s just simpler to have them there anyway.
  • You must not be using a custom-installed version of Ruby or Apache (i.e. via Fink or DarwinPorts), as the installer package augments the included versions that come with Mac OS X Tiger, and will not work with custom-installed binaries.
  • You should be familiar with some basic terminal commands. These instructions will help, but Rails itself has components that can only be run from the command line.

Download and install the package

First up, grab the package I mentioned above: Ruby on Rails installer (about 6.6 Mb), and install it. This package includes:

  • A fix for Ruby 1.8.2 that comes with Mac OS X 10.4 - by default, it tries to cross-compile an native rubygems extensions for i686 as well as ppc. This won’t work on a standard Tiger install, so we remove those references.
  • FastCGI developer’s kit
  • RubyGems 0.8.10 with the following gems pre-installed:
    • BlueCloth 1.0
    • FastCGI Bindings for Ruby 0.8.6.1
    • Madeleine 0.7.1
    • Rake 0.6.2
      • RedCloth 3.0.4
      • Ruby on Rails 0.13.1
      • SQLite 3 Bindings for Ruby 1.1.0
      • Syntax 1.0.0
      • More…

Update your rubygems

The installer package I created was built a few months ago, so some of the gems have newer versions available. Thankfully, gems are really, really easy to update. Open a new terminal window and paste this in:

$ sudo gem update

This will go through the process of bringing all of your gems, including Rails, up to the latest versions available. Accept any questions it asks about dependencies.

Create a test rails application

To make sure everything installed properly, go back to the terminal and type the following:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir Rails
$ cd Rails
$ rails Test

You should see the following output:

create
create  app/apis
create  app/controllers
create  app/helpers
create  app/models
create  app/views/layouts
create  config/environments
create  components
create  db
create  doc
create  lib
create  log
create  public/images
create  public/javascripts
create  public/stylesheets
create  script
create  test/fixtures
create  test/functional
create  test/mocks/development
create  test/mocks/test
create  test/unit
create  vendor
create  Rakefile
create  README
create  CHANGELOG
create  app/controllers/application.rb
create  app/helpers/application_helper.rb
create  test/test_helper.rb
create  config/database.yml
create  config/routes.rb
create  public/.htaccess
create  config/environment.rb
create  config/environments/production.rb
create  config/environments/development.rb
create  config/environments/test.rb
create  script/console
create  script/destroy
create  script/generate
create  script/server
create  script/runner
create  script/benchmarker
create  script/profiler
create  script/breakpointer
create  public/dispatch.rb
create  public/dispatch.cgi
create  public/dispatch.fcgi
create  public/404.html
create  public/500.html
create  public/index.html
create  public/favicon.ico
create  public/javascripts/prototype.js
create  public/javascripts/effects.js
create  public/javascripts/dragdrop.js
create  public/javascripts/controls.js
create  doc/README_FOR_APP
create  log/server.log
create  log/production.log
create  log/development.log
create  log/test.log

If that all worked, congratulations! You now have a working rails install. At this point, you could simple type:

$ cd ~/Rails/Test
$ ./script/server

And rails will bring up WEBrick, a simple ruby-based web server that you can use to develop with. You’ll notice that WEBrick is slow - which is why we’re going to use Apache instead.

Setting the right permissions on your application

If your rails application is still running WEBrick, stop that now by pressing control-c. There are a couple of ways to do set-up rails applications under Apache, but I’m going to stick with what I consider to be the most straight-forward approach. Your applications will be served under URLs like http://localhost/testapp/.

First up, we need to make sure that the permissions on your rails application are OK. This is the most common error I’ve come across when setting up a new application. It’s important to know which user the Apache is running as - by default under Mac OS X, it’s the user www with a group of www. Obviously, you still need to be able to write to your application, so we’re just going to change the group on the applications files by typing:

$ cd ~/Rails/
$ sudo chgrp -R www Test

Now we need to make sure that the db, log, and public, and any logs stored in log can be accessed and written to by Apache:

$ cd ~/Rails/Test $ chmod 0775 db $ chmod 0777 log $ chmod 0775 public $ chmod 0666 log/*.log

Right, your permissions should be OK at this point, so let’s move on to configuring Apache to see your rails application!

Set-up Apache to handle your rails applications

In your favourite text editor (I use Macromate’s TextMate) open up /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. Scroll right to the bottom and make sure the following code is present:

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
    FastCgiIpcDir /tmp/fcgi_ipc/
    AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
</IfModule>

Now you’ll need to add the code to handle your application:

Alias /test/ "/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Rails/Test/public/"
Alias /test "/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Rails/Test/public/"

<Directory /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Rails/Test/public/>
    Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Save and close the file. Now inside your Test rails application, you’ll need to open public/.htaccess and change the following line:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]

to

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

You’ll also need to add the following line underneath RewriteEngine On:

RewriteBase /test/

Save and close the file. Now, type the following in your terminal:

$ sudo apachectl graceful

Check your application

Open your web browser and point it at http://localhost/test/. If everything worked OK, you should be rolling on rails!

I’ll try to post some more information about where to go from here, and also how to install the mysql ruby bindings which can be troublesome, and aren’t included in my package (I use sqlite as my database while developing). For now, have fun!