WHy is rails so annoying to deploy?

Yeah freaking with "NOTHING WORKS!!!!!!!!!" isn't really the best approach when... trying to do anything. Regardless, having never heard of xlsuite before your post, I figured I'd try to get it running to try to see where things might go have gone wrong.

First, ran git clone git://github.com/xlsuite/xlsuite.git. Then, as you mentioned the "ActionController::AbstractRequest (NameError)" error, I tried to find out from their site what version of Rails it requires. Apparently doesn't matter, as they've frozen Rails with their app, so it will always use the bundled version rather than whatever you happen to have installed via RubyGems. Next, I followed the instructions in the INSTALL file:

= Basic Installation

XLsuite is built on-top of MySQL and cannot currently use any other database servers.

1. cp config/database.yml.sample config/database.yml 2. Edit config/database.yml to suit you (must use MySQL) 3. rake db:create db:structure:load db:bootstrap 4. script/server 5. http://localhost:3000/

= Complete Installation

You will need to register an account at Amazon's Web Services to use the Simple Storage Service (S3). XLsuite stores it's assets in S3. You may configure Asset to store the files on the local filesystem by changing the :storage key of the #has_attachment call to :file_system.

If you want to integrate with Google Maps, you'll need a Google Maps API key. Update the Configuration named :google_maps_api_key with your key.

= Running the tests

1. rake db:create RAILS_ENV=test 2. rake

After creating my database user and configuring database.yml accordingly, I ran "rake db:structure:load db:bootstrap" (as I don't give my development roles SUPER privileges." I *did* get an error here though:

(in /home/xeno/projects/ xlsuite) Missing these required gems:   RedCloth ~> 4.0

You're running:   ruby 1.8.7.72 at /usr/bin/ruby1.8   rubygems 1.3.5 at /home/xeno/.gem/ruby/1.8, /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

Run `rake gems:install` to install the missing gems.

So I ran sudo rake gems:install (again, I'm not running as the superuser). RedCloth installed successfully, as did the database rake commands now. Then I ran ./script/server, browsed to http://localhost:3000, and after waiting for whatever it is XLSuite does, was greeted with the login page. a Relevant information for my environment is:

xeno@Clover:~/projects/xlsuite$ cat /etc/issue Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l

xeno@Clover:~/projects/xlsuite$ ruby -v ruby 1.8.7 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 72) [x86_64-linux]

Using the distro's Ruby, not anything custom compiled here. So, before trying to hack away for no reason at code you do not understand, what *are* the errors you're encountering, and what are you doing to resolve each individual error as it happens?