This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Jared Richardson. Original Post: Ruby on Rails Quickstart Bundles Feed Title: Jared's Weblog Feed URL: http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/index.rss Feed Description: Jared's weblog. The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Jared Richardson Latest Posts From Jared's Weblog

If you're on OSX and wanting to experiment with Rails, then check out the Locomotive project on SourceForge. (Thanks to Charlie Squires for sending me the link!)

If you're a Windows or Linux user, then check out Instant Rails

In both cases the teams have bundled up Ruby, Rails, a database, and everything else you need to run Rails, verified the versions all work together, and bundled it all into a single package.

From the Locomotive web site:

Locomotive is a flexible one-click solution to Ruby on Rails development for Mac OS X 10.3+. In one self-contained application, it gives you a fully functional Rails development platform including: (but not limited to)

• The framework: Ruby on Rails
• The favored webserver: lighttpd with FastCGI
• An embedded database: SQLite

From the Instant Rails website:

Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment.

This is the best way I know for a Rails novice to get up and running. I haven't used the Locomotive project but I have tried Instant Rails and it works great.

Why post about Rails again? Because your brain needs exercise. Learn something new over the holidays. :)

Enjoy!

Jared