rubyinstaller2 VS HomeBrew

Ruby 3.x (for Windows, use RubyInstaller),

Ruby is the foundation upon which Ruby on Rails is built. Download and install the latest Ruby version from the official RubyInstaller website. This will provide you with the Ruby programming language and its associated tools.

To install Ruby and Jekyll on a Windows machine, you’d use the RubyInstaller. This can be done by downloading and installing a Ruby+Devkit version from RubyInstaller Downloads and using the default options for installation.

Here's the command line I used when downloading it. The exclusion flag didn't seem to work for some reason, and I have a ton of folders called things like "%3flike_comment%3d66879%26_wpnonce%3d4295aac3b6". If it matters, I'm doing this on windows. I installed Ruby locally on windows, and ran this command through the command prompt from that.

If you're just experimenting rather than trying to match a production environment, you could run Ruby / Rails on Windows directly: https://rubyinstaller.org/

I've been doing Ruby on Rails since the early 2.x days. (I dabbled with 1.x, but gave up to let it "age" a little.) For the first 5 years, I was on Linux full time, and it was great.

Then I moved to Mac, and it was almost as great. (The terminal situation and general integration of the command line is still more cohesive in Linux.)

For about the past 10 years, I've been at a standard Fortune 250 Windows-is-the-entire-world kind of place. I've been able to do my work on my personal Mac, but I've always made sure that I can do all of my Rails work on my corporate Windows laptop. There are times my code needs to access file locations and other applications inside the corporate firewall.

Obviously, people are correct that Ruby is not a "first-class" citizen on Windows, but RubyInstaller (https://rubyinstaller.org) has been a lifesaver. Not only does it "just work," and compile all the gems I've used, but it also includes a neat little script that addresses the common "corporate" practice of having to install custom SSL certificates so that IT can decode all traffic going through their firewall. (They install these certs directly into the Windows networking stack, but bundler doesn't use the stack.) The SSL bundle their script creates is also useful for use with Postgres database connections. You just need RubyInstaller, NodeJS, and a better terminal application (or maybe RubyMine), and you're GTG on Windows.

I've tried to use WSL, both version 1 and 2. If you need to support many Rails apps, and switch Ruby versions (with RVM or rbenv), that might be the way to go, but for just one (big) project, I prefer to stay inside the native environment. And even if I were tempted to use WSL, I'd rather just use an actual VM software like VMWare or OpenBox, and control the details of the virtualization myself. YMMV.

Feeling eager to run your very first program written in Ruby? Here's the link where you can download the installer for Ruby Runtime Tools: Downloads Ruby Installer for Windows.

Install latest Ruby+Devkit package which you can get from RubyInstaller for Windows.

Homebrew - The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux)

Homebrew is a highly popular package manager on macOS and Linux systems, enabling users to easily install, update, and uninstall command-line tools and applications. Its design philosophy focuses on simplifying the software installation process on macOS, eliminating the need for manual downloads and compilations of software packages.

Homebrew - package manager for linux-based OSs.

Package Manager: Homebrew

Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix.

Are you using SQLite that ships with macOS, or SQLite installed from homebrew?

I had a different problem in the past with the SQLite that ships with macOS, and have been using SQLite from homebrew since.

So if it’s the one that comes with macOS that gives you this problem that you are having, try using SQLite from homebrew instead.

https://brew.sh/

Before we begin, make sure you have Homebrew installed on your Mac. Homebrew is a package manager that makes it easy to install software and dependencies. You can install Homebrew by following the instructions on their website: https://brew.sh/

I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS.

I have always either installed Node from the installer provided by the Nodejs website or, via Brew in macOS. I have also used nvm in the past but did not know that there was a best practice to guide us.

A running Rails application needs a database to connect to. You may already have your database of choice installed, but if not, I recommend PostgreSQL, or Postgres for short. On a Mac, probably the easiest way to install it is with Posrgres.app. Another option, the one I prefer, is to use Homebrew. With Homebrew installed, this command will install PostgreSQL version 16 along with libpq: