Trying out Rails 3.1

Rails 3.1 is almost here, and all the rock star ninja hipster early adopters have been playing with it for a while. I’m not a ninja (picture me with a black tight skin suit if you wonder why), so I didn’t install it until today.

Installation is pretty straight forward, but there are a couple of tricks, so here they are in full Technicolor to save you a couple of minutes.

The first thing you are going to need is the right gem, which you can install directly via

gem install rails --pre

I didn’t want to install it as a system-wide gem, so I created a new gemset in rvm like this

rvm gemset create r31

If you are on windows and don’t have rvm, maybe you could install another version of ruby via pik, but I cannot help you with that.

Anyway, system-wide or scoped to a local gemset, after installing the gem you should be able to create your first rails 3.1 project like this

rails new sandbox

If you are on rvm, don’t forget to create a .rvmrc file with your local gemset to make things more convenient. In my case the contents of the file are

rvm 1.9.2@r31

Are we there already? not yet! Rails 3.1 needs a javascript runtime for all the asset magic. You can choose the runtime of your choice, as long as your choice is one of the options here :p

I chose (see update below!) the rubyracer because I’ve heard good things about it lately, but what do I know, just pick the one you prefer and add it to your gemfile. In my case it looks like this

gem 'therubyracer'

And, you know, now you need to bundle it

bundle install --binstubs

And that’s it, now you can do things like

bin/rake -T

Of course you can start the rails server too

bin/rails server

You know the rest of the song.. Now go to http://localhost:3000 and start dancing!

update: i found some errors when using ruby 1.9.2p0, therubyracer and coffescript. I changed to nodejs (just install it and leave the binary somewhere in your path) and things got back to normal

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Multiple rubygems versions, GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH

Installing rubygems is failrly easy and it’s great to have a package manager so you can forget about manually installing and upgrading the components you use. After installing a gem, you can require it from any ruby script and use it hassle-free. Well, given your ruby interpreter can find it.

When you install rubygems, a lot of default configuration is done behind the scenes. If you must see to believe, you can run

gem environment

do you believe me now?

Unless you are on windows, you have probably experienced already that gems can get installed in different locations. If using a superuser account, the global configuration will be used, but with a regular account gems install under your home directory.

If you are not careful about how you install your gems, or if you are using rake gems:install from regular accounts, you might end up installing the same version of a gem twice. That’s not only WET (not DRY, bear with me here) but it eats up your poor HD.

Things can get a lot worse than that. Suppose you are working with both JRuby and Ruby MRI. When you use rubygems from JRuby, it will try to use a different gem location by default. So, depending on how you are installing gems, you could have up to three different copies of exactly the same version.

And if you are on ubuntu and you upgrade from an old version of rubygems to the latest one —you will have to if you install Rails 2.3.4; if you are having problems you can read right here how to update it— you might be surprised that your gems are being installed *again*. The reason is under older versions the default location was “/var/lib/gems” and the latest one defaults to “/usr/lib/ruby/gems”.

Well, four different copies of ActiveRecord 2.3.4 are three and a half more copies than I wanted, mind you.

So.. how can we stop this gem install frenzy? Easy. Don’t use the defaults. Each of your installations is using default values, but they can be easily overridden with command line parameters or much more conveniently with environment variables.

Remember the title of this post? Can you see anything there that would make a good candidate for environment variables? That’s right, all the rubygems versions honor the GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH variables, so if they are set they will be used.

Depending on your OS, you can set these variables in different places. I’m on ubuntu and a bit lazy, so I chose the easiest, which is by adding this to my .bashrc file.

export GEM_HOME=/var/lib/gems/1.8
export GEM_PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8

And now, no matter what I’m using: Ruby MRI, JRuby, or the latest rubygems, my already installed gems will be used, and the new ones will be put in the same place.

Saving the world is a hard job, but someone has to do it.

My slides for “Jruby on Rails: Ruby on Rails sobre la JVM”

It was interesting to be at the Sun Open Communities Forum and meet people I used to work with (or even teach to) as back in time as in 1996.

It was also interesting to have the opportunity to introduce Ruby and Ruby on Rails to Java developers and show them how they could use it from the familiar JVM.

As usual, I uploaded to slideshare the slides I used in my presentation.

The layout might be a bit enterprisey for my standards, but I was representing my company, so I used the company template. Anyway, the presentation is under Creative Commons, so feel free to use it in any way you can imagine, as long as you respect the “non commercial attribution share alike” license.

Speaking about JRuby on Rails at the Sun Open Communities Forum

I’ve been invited to speak about JRuby on Rails at the Sun Open Communities Forum. This event is the evolution of the former editions of OpenJavaDay/OpenSolarisDay, revamped to include more Open Source communities.

Apart from the predictable “all-things-java” sessions, this year there are some interesting labs and talks about MySQL Scalability, REST, AJAX, the cloud, development frameworks and different languages running on the JVM.

Most of the talks, including mine, will be delivered in Spanish, but there will be some in English too.

My session will be

JRuby on Rails. Ruby on Rails on the JVM

And the excerpt I’ve sent for the talk goes something like this

Ruby is a dynamic programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. Ruby on Rails is a web framework optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. The JVM is one of the world’s most heavily-optimized pieces of software. The combination of these three elements provides a superb platform for building web applications.

In my session I will explain the highlights of Ruby, how Ruby on Rails has changed the rules of web development, and how JRuby allows for the integration of Ruby (on Rails) and Java.

Inscription is free and if you cannot attend, there will be live streaming as well. Notice you also have to inscribe (checking the “Lo seguiré por internet” radio button) if you want to watch the streaming.

install nokogiri and libxml on ubuntu

a quick one..

the scenario:
you want to install nokogiri on ubuntu but you cannot get the gem to install because of unmet dependencies

the solution:

sudo apt-get install libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev
sudo gem install nokogiri

the end

Cucumber, Selenium, Webrat, and Windows

I spent last Saturday hacking around with some really smart people in Madrid. It’s not widely known than in Spain there’s a thriving Ruby on Rails community -my guess would be a language thing- but if you take a look at some of the Rails patches, Hackfest winners or the official Rails documentation project, you would be surprised to see how many -and how good- contributions are coming from this side of the world.

Once in a while we like to get together and take code challenges, so we can learn from each other and eat pizza to match the stereotype ;)

Thing is I’m a Windows guy. I know I should be sorry, I know it’s for housewives (or househusbands for that matter), but that’s life. (disclaimer: I’m planning to switch to Ubuntu in the near future)

As you know, developing software in windows while entirely possible is a bit more difficult than in other systems, specially when it comes to compiling, forking and the like.

Last Saturday I was, as usual, the only windows at hand (the rest being a lot of Macs in different flavors and a lonely Ubuntu) and, as a part of the code challenge, I had to run some tests with Cucumber, Selenium and Webrat. Apart from libxml, that has been working flawlessly in my computer for months, no other binaries were involved, so you would think everything was working just fine.. well, think twice.

First problem was the test server couldn’t be started automatically. I didn’t investigate much about it (my guess being that a fork or a system call is being issued and Windows cannot cope with it) since it was easier just to start it manually before running the tests. Also it was faster, because it didn’t need to be started every time.

After this obstacle, when I was trying to run the tests, I was getting a cryptic Errno::EADDRNOTAVAIL message. At first I thought it was because of Selenium not being able to bind to the given port, but a quick test from the command line discarded that possibility.

I don’t know anything about webrat (yet) but as the song goes, with a little help from my friends I was able to locate the source of the problem. When connecting to remote control Selenium, Webrat is trying to bind to the address “0.0.0.0” and that’s something Windows doesn’t like.

All I had to do was opening the file “selecium_rc_server.rb” at the gem source and replacing “0.0.0.0” by “127.0.0.1”.

I was told I can do this much more clearly at the Webrat config, but I tried it out and I still had the same problem. Taking a look at the Webrat code I would say the config param is not honoured system-wide, but truth is I was in a hurry and I didn’t researched it thoroughly. I had a challenge to solve after all ;)

Once I did this, all was hunky dory. Selenium started, the form fields were filled in, the tests were passing (or not) and the result was displayed on my not-ansi console. Bummer.

Believe me, cucumber is not half the fun without the colors in the output. Fortunately enough, google can tell you where to find lots of ansi-aware console replacements. Unfortunately enough console2, my favourite, is not one of those.

So, there, it took a bit of extra work but now you can also run this neat stack in your good-old windows box.

Speaking at EuRuKo 2009

It’s only two weeks for EuRuKo 2009, the most important Ruby conference in Europe.

As you probably know, EuRuKo is a grassroots itinerant conference, entirely organized by -and for- Ruby developers. This year, the conference will be held in Barcelona, and I have the honor of being a -tiny- part of the organization as a member of the Spanish Ruby Users Group, the local group preparing the event.

It’s also pretty cool that ASPgems is one of the sponsors. I cannot help but feel a tang of pride (awww, the diva in me ;) ) when I see the commitment and support of the company when it comes to community events.

The list of scheduled talks looks promising. Starting with Matz’s keynote there will be sessions about things like cross-platform mobile development, voice-enabled applications, interacting with MIDI instruments from Ruby, Image processing and other non-typical uses of Ruby. They have the sweet scent of EPIC WIN all over.

Did you take a look at the list of talks? Any familiar names? Well.. yours truly’s talk proposal was accepted and I’ll be speaking about game development using Ruby and Gosu. How cool is that?

I’ve been speaking at other technical events before, and I have a good deal of experience in training, but this will be the first time I do this in English. I’m sure it’s going to be an enriching personal experience.

I’m looking forward to seeing you all there.

Scotland on Rails 2009

De vuelta de la conferencia Scotland on Rails me vuelvo con unas cuantas cosas aprendidas/confirmadas

a) Lo de menos son las charlas (aunque sigue siendo importante que, si las hay, sean interesantes). Lo que importa es el ambiente que se genera alrededor . Creo que el futuro de los eventos de desarrollo va por menos charlas, o por charlas filosóficas.

b) Tener un nombre en la comunidad no garantiza que seas competente haciendo presentaciones. Lo que sí garantiza es que te aplaudirán digas lo que digas (o leas lo que leas, aunque lleve años publicado y no tenga ningún interés).

c) El feedback positivo en una conferencia será directamente proporcional a la gente que venga de otros países. Se ve que la cortesía hace que evalúes bien aunque cometas el suicidio de no tener wifi en un sitio lleno de geeks, haya pocos enchufes, y des un catering de todo a 100.

d) La comunidad Rails hispana es muy potente, técnica y personalmente. El día que nos dé por hablar en inglés la vamos a liar parda. Da gusto escuchar a cualquiera de los de la representación “española” formada por Sam, Rai, Blat, Xavier, Alfredo, Gaizka, Susana, Fernando G., Sergio, Christos, Luismi, Guillermo, Felipe, David, Raúl, Juanjo, Jaime (y yo mismo :p )

En cuanto a las charlas, las que me inspiraron algo fueron (en orden cronológico):

– Getting Git, por Scott Chacon. Muy didáctico y con un buen balance entre crash course y consejos para usuarios más avanzados. Me gustó tanto que en cuanto su libro se publique es muy posible que lo compre. EPIC WIN

– Building blocks of modularity, por Jim Weirich. A pesar de alguna diferencia de criterio que tengo en las categorías de “connascence”, me pareció una charla muy interesante. Lo mejor es que no tenía nada que ver con Ruby o Rails. Era una charla de ingeniería/arquitectura de software. Así sí. EPIC WIN

– Security – what Rails will and won’t do for you, por Rory McCune. Sin entrar en nada especialmente novedoso, hizo una muy buena exposición de seguridad, comprensible, con ritmo, y con algunos datos que me parecieron interesantes. Es posible que acabe cambiando el login en alguna aplicación después de escucharla. WIN

– Advanced deployment, por Jonathan Weiss. Estuve a punto de perderme esta charla porque el nombre es muy engañoso, pero afortunadamente una amiga me hizo leer la descripción de la charla y acabé viéndola. No va de cómo hacer deploy, sino de qué forma puedes lidiar con una instalación compleja que requiere rendimiento, en concreto muy enfocado a la capa de datos. Explicaba las diferentes opciones para que tu base de datos escale, bien con replicación master-slave, master-master, particionado vertical de base de datos, sharding.. o mucho más sencillamente aplicando los famosos KISS y less is more. Me gustó ver que varias de las soluciones que aportaba las tenemos en producción en algunos proyectos. Siempre reconforta ver que lo que has hecho confiando en tu instinto es algo que tiene sentido. WIN

– The Ruby Object Model, por Dave Thomas. Nada nuevo que no esté escrito hace años (de hecho en los libros de este señor), pero de todos modos muy bien explicado y con unas referencias muy bien puestas a Simula y Smalltalk, incluída alguna frase lapidaria de Alan Kay. Lástima que no dedicase unos minutos más (dos) para introducir la teoría de objetos y el concepto de mensaje. Es lo único que le faltó para que me pareciera brillante. EPIC WIN

Y las charlas a las que asistí y que me hicieron sentir decepcionado:

– Keynote por Marcel Molina. Me alegro de que sepas leer y de que conozcas la página archive.org. El resto de la sala también tenemos internet en casa y también sabemos leer. Quizás sea especialmente duro porque en todas las charlas que he visto de Marcel me ha parecido brillante y esperaba mucho de esta keynote. FAIL

– Merb and Rails 3.0, por Yehuda Katz. Quitando el momento “teletienda engine yard de los primeros minutos”, me pareció en algunos puntos demasiado agresivo, en otros demasiado técnico, en otros demasiado ambiguo, y en otros pelín soberbio. Puede que por eso me dijeran que me parezco a él :P No me gustó su charla, pero he de reconocerle que de no haber sido por él puede que nunca se hubiera inventado el famoso juego “muerte violenta en seis movimientos”. De nuevo puede que sea un pelín duro porque Merb me gusta mucho y esperaba una charla espectacular. FAIL

– Server to server communication using XMPP and Ruby, por George Palmer. Dar una charla de XMPP sin hablar de XMPP y sin estar seguro de las siglas tiene su mérito. Dar una charla de 45 minutos en 20 tiene su mérito. Jactarse de no haberse leído un manual de 108 páginas porque es demasiado grande y luego no saber contestar a ninguna pregunta diciendo “pues esto estaría bien que lo hiciera, pero no sé si lo lleva”, tiene su mérito. Y a pesar de todo el FAIL no es absoluto porque la puesta en escena y la presentación multimedia me gustaron. Salvado por las slides de ser un EPIC FAIL.

A pesar de que el nivel de las charlas no me pareció óptimo y de que varios detalles de organización me parecieron muy malos (como que se llame “scotland on rails” y luego se quejen de que está demasiado orientada a Rails), el balance general que me llevo de la conferencia es bueno.

La experiencia fue muy interesante, la compañía inmejorable, y nada como ir a una de éstas para estar al día en tendencias de camisetas, zapatillas, y portátiles y gadgets cool ;)

Las fotos de la conferencia se están subiendo a flickr

p.s. gracias a aspgems por el detalle de hacerse cargo de mi viaje.

Aptana RadRails. El libro… Mi libro ;)

Ya va quedando menos para que se publique el libro de RadRails en el que llevo trabajando varios meses. Acabo de terminar los últimos cambios después de las revisiones técnicas y ya queda sólo la revisión de estilo de los últimos tres capítulos.

En la web de la editorial ya han creado la página para el libro, así que parece que esto ya no tiene marcha atrás (aunque el título todavía podría sufrir algún cambio)

La verdad es que tiene su aquel eso de ver tu nombre en la portada de un libro… y eso que al final no han escogido mi propuesta de foto para la portada ;)

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