[...]... book is for those NET developers who are ready for their next adventure 1.1 Why Rails? Rails offers attractive benefits to all website developers Let’s highlight some of the most-often cited reasons that developers are trying Rails The first is the issue of cost Already got a computer? Then you’re in luck, because everything else you need can be had for free The Ruby interpreter, the entire Rails framework... database Rails supports the use of most popular relational database systems, so what you decide upon for your projects is largely based on what you’re comfortable using MySQL is free and powerful, so Rails developers who don’t otherwise have a preference tend to choose it for production use SQL Server is also supported for those of us who are comfortable with it from the NET world However, for development... building a small Rails application 1.4 Installing Ruby and Rails The first thing we’ll look at is how to install the Ruby language, followed by the quick-and-easy installation of the Rails framework Instant Rails Instant Rails, 6 written by Curt Hibbs, has long been the Windows tool of choice for getting a Rails development environment up and running quickly However, there is a lot of valuable information to... them out And remember that Rails is an open source project That means absolutely anyone is allowed submit code patches for consideration Whether you’d like to 2 3 4 5 http://sapphiresteel.com/ http://www.ruby-lang.org/ and http://www.rubyonrails.org Start with http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk or #rubyonrails on IRC http://railsbrain.com/ and http://api.rubyonrails.org/ are good places... we’ll show you how to get a Ruby and Rails development environment set up on your Windows machine It’s a fairly straightforward process that takes just a few minutes In fact, building a Rails development environment from scratch is arguably easier on Windows than on any other platform The ingredients for creating a productive Rails development environment are Ruby, Rails, a database engine, and a few... NET/ASP.NET 3.5 with Rails 2.1 The Ruby examples will run on most newer Ruby versions, but version 1.8.6 or newer is recommended Because Rails is ever-changing technology, we’ve made our best effort to present the examples using the latest and greatest, Rails 2.1 However, that means many of the code examples will not work in earlier versions of Rails Most of the NET code is vanilla, out-of-the-box ASP.NET... developing Rails applications, you’ll find that the features of your editor/IDE are going to be less important than simply finding an environment in which you are comfortable writing code and navigating through the Rails directory structure That said, here are several good choices for the Windows platform: E Text Editor A text editor that is similar in spirit to TextMate for Mac OS X Ruby in Steel A Rails. .. text editor that is similar in spirit to TextMate for Mac OS X Ruby in Steel A Rails development plug-in for Visual Studio Aptana IDE (RadRails) Formerly a stand-alone application, RadRails is now a plug-in for the Aptana IDE and is a mature Rails development environment that supports Ruby and Rails out of the box, including syntax highlighting and basic code completion WordPad If you are on Windows,... bar for Rails adoption in “the enterprise” is getting lower and lower Finally, it’s been our experience that developing applications with Rails is just plain fun There’s a particular rhythm and flow that occurs with Rails development that most developers enjoy The Rails framework is geared to generate visible results quickly, leading to the pattern of “small victories” often cited as a key reason for. .. 253) will also provide better support for Rails In the meantime, many developers choose to use alternative coding environments on Windows Many developers, however, switch to a new operating system altogether Rails, like most open source projects, began life on Linux The best tools and support thrive primarily on Mac and Linux systems Since you will likely deploy your Rails applications onto Linux servers, . the next flight out. This book is for those .NET developers who are ready for their next adventure. 1.1 Why Rails? Rails offers attractive benefits to all website developers. Let’s highlight some. X. Ruby in Steel A Rails development plug-in for Visual Studio. Aptana IDE (RadRails) Formerly a stand-alone application, RadRails is now a plug-in for the Aptana ID E and is a mature Rails development. of Rails. Most of the .NET code is vanilla, out-of-the-box ASP .NET 3.5. Although numerous plug-ins and third-party assemblies exist that give .NET developers some of the same capabilities as Rails