Preparation for Rails Projects

There are a few extra steps of preparation when working with Rails projects:

Install Rails

Go to your terminal and execute the following:

• Mac OS X: sudo gem install rails mongrel
• Windows: gem install rails mongrel

Check the SQLite3 Database System

You should be able to use a PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite database server with very little alteration. For the purposes of these tutorials we will use SQLite because it is extremely lightweight, pretty easy for beginners, installed on many systems already, and that the database is stored in a simple file so that they can be exchanged easily. To check if you have SQLite installed already, open Terminal (OS X) or a Command Prompt (Windows) and enter sqlite3. At the time of this writing the latest version is 3.6.12, but any version above 3.5 should be fine. Type .quit inside SQLite to exit.

Install SQLite

• Mac OS X
  • Download and install http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite3-3.6.16-osx-x86.bin.gz
  • In your terminal window sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
• Windows
  • Download http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-3_6_16.zip and http://sqlite.org/sqlitedll-3_6_18.zip
  • Unzip the two archives, then copy all three files into both your C:\windows\system32\ and C:\windows\ folders
  • Close and reopen your Command Prompt window
  • At your command prompt gem install sqlite3-ruby

If you’d like a GUI for managing you SQLite databases, open Firefox and install the extension here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817.