In mid-May, I bought
myself a ticket to the upcoming Windy City Rails conference.
Only problem was, I
had not used Rails yet. I'd had so many issues setting it up on
Windows that I loaded Linux to my laptop just to
get it to download. It'll
be okay, I thought. I had the Rails framework downloaded now.
I bought a Rails course on Udemy that I could watch. I
had a few months before the conference. I could just use that time to
learn. I had it in the bag.
Except I didn't.
It is now July 24th;
I have less than 2 months before Windy City Rails and have not yet
touched Rails. I'm off work today and
up for a project, so I decided it
was a good day to play.
* Before continuing, it is worth noting that I tried installing Rails a few months ago, when I still had my HP Stream 13. I ran out of hard drive space and couldn't install, so I bought a new Asus laptop. Then Microsoft wouldn't play nice with the Nokogiri gem, so I loaded Linux Mint. Finally got the Rails framework installed. *
* Before continuing, it is worth noting that I tried installing Rails a few months ago, when I still had my HP Stream 13. I ran out of hard drive space and couldn't install, so I bought a new Asus laptop. Then Microsoft wouldn't play nice with the Nokogiri gem, so I loaded Linux Mint. Finally got the Rails framework installed. *
I
open my terminal, type in $
rails --version. It
assures me I have Rails version 4.2.6. Sweet! I follow the steps at
the Ruby on Rails guide to create a new blog, then
run the $ bundle install command (even tossing in sudo, to be safe.)
I watched the updates carefully, biting my lip as the Nokogiri gem
loaded. That particular gem has given me issues in the past, so I
breathed a sigh of relief when it loaded. The rest of the update
continued…..
ERROR.
MIME-TYPES-DATA REQUIRES RUBY VERSION >=2.0.
WHAT?? I'm
running Ruby version 2.3.1!!!
I
get to Google post haste. There's a workaround on Github.
I try it – it works!
I
do, however, make a note not to trust this mime-types-data thing in
the future.
Okay,
great. Bundle install worked, new blog file opened, and I'm told I
need to get the Rails application server running. Seems simple
enough. I run the $ bin/rails server command.
ERROR
TRYING TO LOAD GEM UGLIFIER.
You've got to be
shitting me.
Dude,
I don't even know what an Uglifier gem is. Back to Google, where this
time I find some help from our friendly neighborhood Stack Overflow folks.
The explanation there corresponds with a side note from the Rails
guide. I also start feeling better as I've at least seen NodeJS
before.
I
try again to run $ bin/rails server. It works!!
Rails is now, finally, up and running on my computer.
Next time I plan to actually build something.