Ruby on Rails, a web application framework that helps you build great applications and websites can easily be installed and setup on Ubuntu systems using the steps below. Many beautiful applications and websites are built on Ruby programming language. and setting up your environment is the first step.
This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to setup a Ruby on Rails environment on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and 18.10.
There are many tutorials online that will help you setup your own environment. however, this post will make it easy for students and new users who are just learning how to create their own Ruby on Rails environments.
When you’re ready to get your environment setup, follow the steps below:These are the packages we’re going to be setting up.
- Ruby version 2.5.3
- Rails version 5.2.1
- MariaDB
Step 1: Installing Ruby
To install Ruby and Rails on Ubuntu, you’ll need to install some dependencies. To make that happen, install Node.js and Yarn repositories. This will make installing the dependencies easier.
First install these curl and git packages.
sudo apt update sudo apt install curl git
Than run the commands below to add Node.js and Yarn repositories and keys to your system. Then install some core packages to get your environment going.
curl -sL | sudo -E bash - curl -sS | sudo apt-key add - echo "deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nodejs yarn zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev software-properties-common libffi-dev
When you’re done. continue below:
After adding the repositories and installing necessary packages above, install Ruby with your local profile settings using rbenv. you’ll then use rbenv to install ruby-build.
cd ~/ git clone ~/.rbenv echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc exec $SHELL git clone ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc exec $SHELL
After setting up your local profile. run the commands below to install Ruby version 2.5.3. If a newer version is available, replace the version number to that. vist this site to find out Ruby latest versions.
rbenv install 2.5.3 rbenv global 2.5.3
To verify that Ruby is installed, run the commands below:
ruby -v
You should see similar lines as below:
ruby 2.5.3p105 (2018-10-18 revision 65156) [x86_64-linux]
Another package management you’ll want to install is bundler. to do that, run the commands below
gem install bundler
Now run the command below after installing bundler.
rbenv rehash
Step 2: Install Rails
Now that Ruby environment is set up, run the commands below to install Rails. Rails can be installed from a Node.Js. Run the commands below to install Node.js repository, then install Node.js package.
curl -sL | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
Now that Node.js is installed, run the commands below to install Rails.
gem install rails -v 5.2.1
Don’t forget to rehash your rbenv environment installing install new packages.
rbenv rehash
To verify if Rails is installed, run the commands below.
rails -v
You should see something similar to the lines below:
Rails 5.2.1
Step 3: Install MariaDB
Usually a database server is used for most applications. and MariaDB is a great open source database server. to install it on Ubuntu, run the commands below:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client libmariadbclient-dev
After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.
Run these on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
sudo systemctl stop mysql.service sudo systemctl start mysql.service sudo systemctl enable mysql.service
Run these on Ubuntu 18.10 and 18.04 LTS
sudo systemctl stop mariadb.service sudo systemctl start mariadb.service sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
Next, run the commands below to secure the database server with a root password if you were not prompted to do so during the installation.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.
- Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
- Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
- New password: Enter password
- Re-enter new password: Repeat password
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y
Now that MariaDB is installed, to test whether the database server was successfully installed, run the commands below.
sudo mysql -u root -p
type the root password when prompted.
If you see a similar screen as shown above, then the server was successfully installed.
After that, Ruby and Rails should be installed and your environment ready for you to start building apps based on Ruby and Rails.
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