So, here was the 1st question : 1. What is the most recent, stable version of Ruby ? According to my set of respondents, as of the middle of March (beware the Ides of March, noble Caesar) the most current version of Ruby was : Ruby – 1.9.1 . Is this still true or has 1.9.1 been supplanted by a more recent version ?
1.9.1 is the latest stable version of ruby. It's still pretty new though (being the first stable version from the 1.9 line) and a lot of people are still on ruby 1.8.6/7. If you do go for 1.9.1 you may find that some of the libraries or gems you want to use are not quite ready for ruby 1.9.1 or that some of the articles you read don't apply to 1.9.1
And, the next question : 1. What is the most recent, stable version of Ruby on Rails ? As of March 15th,
2.3.2.
the most stable recent version of Rails was 2.2.2 although 2.3 was expected imminently. Is this still true ?
And 3 : 1. Do the 2 versions work together comfortably or are there compatibility issues that I need to be aware of ? Back then the answer was : Ruby 1.8.7 works with Rails 2.2.2 and Ruby 1.9.1 works with Rails 2.3 . Is this still true
that is true.
or has the situation changed yet again ?
And 4 : 1. What is the best version of MySQL I should be using bearing in mind the answers to questions 1,2 & 3 above ?
Mysql 5.1.x is now the GA release of mysql (although some have expressed concern that it was made GA before it was ready (especially with regards to those features that are new in 5.1). Not much has changed on that front recently.
Unfortunately he didn’t provide an earl for MacPorts but I suppose that MacPorts is most likely something like the Hive article and is an alternative way of getting up and running for Ruby & Rails on the Mac. Does anybody have any more information about MacPorts ?
MacPorts is not at all what you think it is. It is a packaging system (derived from the ports system in use in the freebsd world). If you are thinking about apt, emerge etc... then you're thinking along the right lines. There's a awful lot of open source software that can be installed via macports. Perhaps the main advantage of something like macports is that it takes care of dependencies and so on, 99% of the time it just works. Occasionally you may find that macports doesn't have the latest version of the package you want.
Does anybody have any opinion on the relative merits (and, I suppose demerits) of the HiveLogic approach as opposed to MacPorts ? And, finally, it’s my understanding that Macs running Leopard come with both Ruby and Rails already installed on them. So, my questions regarding that situation are as follows : 1. What version of Ruby does a Mac running Leopard have installed on it ?
1.8.6
2. What version of Rails does a Mac running Leopard have installed on it ?
1.2.3
3. Where are they ?
Deep inside /System/Library/Frameworks (but symlinked to /usr/bin/ruby and so on)
4. Will the presence of preinstalled versions of Ruby & Rails on Macs running Leopard cause any problems if I try to use either the HiveLogic or the MacPorts approach to getting up and running using the Ruby on Rails environment ?
Nope.
Fred