This is a short write up on how I installed my Rails development environment on Windows Vista. If you have any trouble, consult the notes section at the bottom.
Update: I missed the part about installing the devkit, thanks to Roger Pack on the Rubyinstaller-devel mailing list. I also added a section for references.
Downloads
You’ll need to download the following:
Installing PostgreSQL 8.4
Installing PostgreSQL is rather simple, just follow the wizard.
Installing Ruby 1.9.1
Installing the devkit
Extract “devkit041109.7z” to your ruby path, “C:\Ruby19”, after which you should have the following directory:
- C:\Ruby19\devkit
Also, edit the file “C:\Ruby19\devkit\msys\1.0.11\etc\fstab” to contain the following:
C:/Ruby19/devkit/gcc/3.4.5 /mingw
C:/Ruby19/devkit/msys/1.0.11/usr/local /usr/local
Installing Rails and the pg gem.
The Ruby installer added a “Start Command Prompt with Ruby” to the Start Menu, go ahead and run that now.
- Add the PostgreSQL bin directory to your path.
- Install rails.
- Install the pg gem.
set Path=%Path%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc rails
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc pg
That’s it, go develop that killer twitter client, its what all the cool kids are doing.
Notes
- If you had previously installed PostgreSQL, remove the service account user with “net user postgres /delete”.
- Copy “C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\libeay32.dll” to “C:\Ruby19\bin” if you encounter an error when Rails attempts to connect to your database.
