Setup Ruby On Rails on Ubuntu

This will take about 30 minutes.

We will be setting up a Ruby on Rails development environment on Ubuntu Operating system.

The reason we're going to be using Ubuntu is because the majority of code you write will run on a Linux server. Ubuntu is one of the easiest Linux distributions to use with lots of documentation so it's a great one to start with.

You'll want to download the latest Desktop version here: http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/

The first step is to install some dependencies for Ruby.

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev

Next we're going to be installing Ruby using one of three methods. Each have their own benefits, most people prefer using rbenv these days, but if you're familiar with rvm you can follow those steps as well. I've included instructions for installing from source as well, but in general, you'll want to choose either rbenv or rvm.

Choose one method. Some of these conflict with each other, so choose the one that sounds the most interesting to you, or go with my suggestion, rbenv.

Installing with rbenv is a simple two step process. First you install rbenv, and then ruby-build:

cd 
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv 
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc 
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc 
exec $SHELL 
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL
rbenv install 2.3.1
rbenv global 2.3.1
ruby -v

The installation for rvm is pretty simple:

sudo apt-get install libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev automake libtool bison libffi-dev
gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm
rvm install 2.3.1
rvm use 2.3.1 --default
ruby -v

Arguably the least useful Ruby setup for development is installing from source, but I thought I'd give you the steps anyways:

cd
wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.3/ruby-2.3.1.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ruby-2.3.1.tar.gz
cd ruby-2.3.1/
./configure
make
sudo make install
ruby -v

The last step is to install Bundler

gem install bundler

rbenv users need to runrbenv rehashafter installing bundler.

Since Rails ships with so many dependencies these days, we're going to need to install a Javascript runtime like NodeJS. This lets you use Coffeescript and the Asset Pipeline in Rails which combines and minifies your javascript to provide a faster production environment.

To install NodeJS, we're going to add it using the official repository:

The easiest way to install nodejs is to use your package manager and running this command in your termianl

sudo apt-get install nodejs

if the above command doesn't work for you, you may try the below one

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo -E bash - 
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

And finally, install rails

gem install rails --version 5.0.0

If you're using rbenv, you'll need to run the following command to make the rails executable available:

rbenv rehash

Now that you've installed Rails, you can run the rails -v command to make sure you have everything installed correctly:

rails -v 
# Rails 5.0.0

If you get a different result for some reason, it means your environment may not be setup properly.

Setup Ruby On Rails on Ubuntu

Overview

Installing Ruby

Installing Rails

if the above command doesn't work for you, you may try the below one