Installing Ruby on Rails in Windows

Posted in Tutorials

After installing ruby on Windows by following these steps, we use gem to install Ruby on Rails (also known as RoR).  This is because Rails is a ruby gem.  You can see this gem by searching “rails” in RubyGems.org

1. Typing …

gem install rails

at the command prompt will attemp to install rails.

2. As you can see, the attempt was not successful.  It gave the error…

ERROR: Error installing rails:
The ‘json’ navite gem requires installed build tools”

Installing devkit

3.  We go to http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads

And download the devkit installer that is appropriate for our version of ruby.  We have ruby 1.93 as determined by “ruby -v”.

4. The devkit comes as an self-extracting exe file.  Run the exe and extract to c:\devkit.

5.  Navigate to c:\devkit and run “ruby dk.rb init” as described here.

This creates the config.yml file, which you can edit to include rubies that you want to be enhanced with DevKit.

6. And then type “ruby dk.rb install”

7.  Now re-run

gem install rails

This has installed rails and its dependencies as well as “ri docs”

8. Type “ri” to start.  Then type a method name to look up (such as “to_a”).  Ctrl-C to exit.

Building first Rails App

9.  Create an empty folder c:\tutorials\learnrails.

10.  CD to that directory and type …

rails new greeting

11. This created a new app in a newly created folder called “greeting”.

Rails App Structure

12. CD into the “greetings” directory and type …

rails server

to start the rails built-in web server WEBrick.  It shows that server is listening on port 3000.

13.  So point browser to http://localhost:3000 to see the default empty rails app and you should see the rails app startup screen…

14.  Ctrl-C will stop the web server.

 

 

 

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