local installation of ruby and of rails?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm fairly new to Ruby (around 6 months) and to RoR (about two or three weeks of practical experience). However, for an important programming project, I'm (for economical reasons) stuck serving my app on a hosted web server which uses Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.3.10. But I want to be using Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3.

My Rails book seemed to indicate (if I understood correctly) that you could actually pick which version of Rails your app used, even if it is not what is installed on the server. Could somebody give me some insight into how that works? Also, it it possible to have (and use) your own "local" installation of Ruby (inside your HOME directory) that is the version you prefer?

2

.... I'm (for economical reasons) stuck serving my app on a hosted web server which uses Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.3.10. But I want to be using Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3.

My Rails book seemed to indicate (if I understood correctly) that you could actually pick which version of Rails your app used, even if it is not what is installed on the server. Could somebody give me some insight into how that works?

See: rake -T | grep rails | grep freeze

Also, it it possible to have (and use) your own "local" installation of Ruby (inside your HOME directory) that is the version you prefer?

See: http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/

HTH,

3

If you use Rails < 3.0 version, so its version is defined in your_app/ config/environment.rb file as

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.3.8' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

To get your RoR application running on a dedicated host, you should have the same Rails and gem versions on the server that you use in the development environment. If not you risk to have some compatibility problems, weird messages, etc. Rails 3 uses a little bit different project structure, command syntax and a lot of other new features (see Rails 3 release notes and guides for more information). You will find compatibility issues (Ruby version required to use Rails 3, etc.) out there.

4

Hello,

On your local try out RVM: http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/

These kind of changes are wise to do in test environment. So you won't have the risk. (I also suggest some test framework and test-driven development - just try it out, you will feel more comfortable.)

But I'm afraid different versions will cause problems, so you may not necessarily want to update that app, if it's already running. If its not big, then rebuild :wink:

Good luck, Zoltán