Okay. I’m totally going to try this again, just to see if I can’t figure it out.

Ruby on Rails – A ruby based framework for web stuff. Basically, I haven’t a clue, but I’m going to at least try to get it running on Windows and make some rudimentary website things, just to see HOW easy it is once I get the basic syntax down.

For the steps outlined below, I’m basically following the tutorial from http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html verbatim, save for a few edits I’m needing to make to get the libraries downloaded and installed properly (i.e., they never told me in that tutorial that we needed the Ruby DevKit installed, and the DevKit download page doesn’t really say HOW to install it).

1. Download and install Ruby. Current version is 2.0.0p247 from http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/. I installed mine to C:\Ruby200.
2. Ensure Ruby is accessible from anywhere in the command shell by typing “ruby -v”. You should get the current version of Ruby. If not, you may need to edit your environment variable “PATH” to include C:\Ruby200\bin (edited, of course, to where you installed Ruby).
3. Download and unzip ruby DevKit, again from RubyInstaller.org. For version 2.0.0 and up, use DevKit 4.7.2. MinGW64-32 or MinGW64-64 specifies whether you’re on 32 or 64-bit. I unzipped the development kit to C:\Ruby_DevKit.
4. Install Ruby DevKit:
   1. Open a command shell and navigate to the location where you unzipped the development kit (C:\Ruby_DevKit).
   2. Type “ruby dk.rb” init
   3. Type “ruby dk.rb” install
   4. You should get messages that the development kit overwrote a few ruby gems that may have been already installed (Updating convenience notice gem override for ‘C:/Ruby200’), and an “installing /devkit.rb”
   5. Type “gem install rails”. You should get a ton of secondary libraries (gems) downloaded along with the main rails gem and documentation for each which could take a good long while. Just be patient. You should get something like “20 gems installed” at the end of the sequence.
   6. Type “rails –version”. I got the message “Rails 4.0.0”
   7. We now have the ruby libraries needed to build a Rails application. Create a new location for Rails (C:\Rails, perhaps), navigate into it from the command shell and type “rails new “. I did like the tutorial suggested and just tried “rails new blog” which created an entire app folder structure in the “blog” subfolder. This was after I received the success messages “Your bundle is complete!” after it had installed a bunch of …whatevers to the blog folder.
   8. Now, I did notice, rails automatically installs its OWN webserver (WEBrick, not Apache or IIS), so this app is able to run straight from its own folder out of Rails. I believe there’s a way to install it over top of Apache, and use the Apache server configurations to control its access, but that’s for later. Right now I just want to get this thing working in the first place, and am willing to put up with WEBrick.
   9. So anyway, I’m now told to startup Rails by typing “rails server”.
   10. Whoops! I got a bunch of sqlite errors. Looks like I need to set up database config and connections first. I also tried starting OUT of the blog application, in which case I was told I needed to be inside a Rails application folder before I could start the server.
   11. Well that was odd. Tried installing the sqlite3 gem, which did not fix anything. Turns out I needed some other version of Ruby that had all the headers included, which I apparently did not do by using the windows installer. I REALLY hate trying to compile gcc projects on Windows. Hopefully I can try to make it work with MySQL since I already have that installed with source files and it’s a part of my path.
   12. Thus, I deleted the blog folder and re-created the app with “rails new blog -d mysql” which forces the new app to use MySQL instead of the default sqlite.
   13.  Got a bundler error that said I needed the mysql2 gem. Ran “gem install mysql2 ‘0.3.13’. This errored, so I tried “gem install mysql” which worked, but was not the right version.
   14. Finally after a bit of research, I got the mysql2 gem to work with the following
       1. “subst X: “C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6”
       2. “gem install mysql2 mysql2 –platform=ruby — –with-mysql-dir=X: –with-mysql-lib=X:\lib –with-mysql-include=X:\include” <== Note the double — in there. Basically, this splits out the main command with a bunch of sub-switches….I think. Simply put, you HAVE to have the — –with-mysql- in there. Otherwise it will fail with an “invalid switch” error.
   15. Trying “rails new blog -d mysql” once more.
   16. Success! I received the “Your bundle is complete” message.
   17. However, when starting up the server, I once again got errors (needed MySQL2 gem 0.3.13). Tried to install using “gem install mysql2 –version=0.3.13 — stuff stuff stuff”. That worked. However, when trying to start up the server, I was STILL getting a bunch of stupid errors about missing something inside the mysql2 0.3.13 gem.
   18. I managed to fix this error. Basically, I was able to copy libmysql.dll from the MySQL Server/lib folder into Ruby/bin. Rails is now started up clean with no errors whatsoever –  I actually see the line “=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server.”
   19. Tried navigating to “localhost:3000” and got the error “Specified ‘mysql’ for database adapter, but the gem is not loaded. Add `gem ‘mysql’` to your Gemfile.” – My database.yml I think is using mysql instead of mysql2 for its handle. I will change it there.
   20. Sure enough. Changing the “adapter” field in config/database.yml from “mysql” to “mysql2” got rid of the error. However, now it’s attempting to login to my MySQL root user without a password. Gotta enter that information (with a password that you will not see repeated here ;)).
   21. Entered the password into database.yml. However, the error did not disappear. I manged to figure it out. I have to restart Rails. Ctrl-C in the command shell and run “rails server” again. This time it worked. However, now the website saying that it cannot find the “blog_development” database. Apparently it’s not smart enough to create it itself (yet), so I will have to look up new tutorials on how to do that later on.
   22. Check that. I just went into PHPMyAdmin and created a blank “blog_developement” database, not adding anything to it. A refresh on the page now shows the “welcome to rails” homepage! I’m in!

In any case! I’ve apparently gotten it to work, so I’ll be changing the title of the blog post from “A failed attempt” to “Success kinda!!”