Last night I tried the RM-Install product from Five Runs. It’s a multi-platform (Linux and Mac) Ruby on Rails Stack powered by BitRock. It is very similar to the Windows RubyStack offered by BitNami, but it is also supports a production install option.

I tried the development install and it was very easy to click next a few times and let it run. The very first thing I tried doing was updating the gems with “sudo gem update”. It failed giving me an error about not finding a file in require for some ELFClass. I’d never seen that before when updating gems, so I’m inclined to think that it may be something from within the RM-Install package.

So at the end of my first experience with the RM-Install stack, I think it’s a better solution to just create your own shell script for installing your Ruby/Rails environment.

If you still haven’t tried Sinatra (which you should have by now) then maybe you just need some additional resources.  Here is a site with some tutorials and a screencast.

I started playing more with Sinatra, and I have so many ideas for it’s usage.  At work I’m using to prototype a quick way to enable remote execution of .Net command line apps.  So I started looking into DataMapper as well to use with it.

So far I can’t get the datamapper gem to install on either XP or Ubuntu.  It gives me the same compilation errors on either platform.  I realize the problem is that I’m missing some software I need to build, but it still seems like a hassle.  Active record “just works”.

Through one of my feeds today I found a link to AppJet.  They’ve got a great site set up for building and hosting javascript based apps using Rhino and jQuery.  Try the shoutbox app.  It gives some great ideas for integrating into some of my existing apps…

After we all thought InstantRails was dead, Rob Bazinet has saved the day.  He has announced that he’s taking over InstantRails and will be soon updating it to Rails 2.0.1.

After we all thought InstantRails was dead, Rob Bazinet has saved the day.  He has announced that he’s taking over InstantRails and will be soon updating it to Rails 2.0.1.

A friend and colleague of mine is searching for a Cold Fusion developer for some contract work.  I’ve seen some of the specs first hand and I can tell you that the software you’ll be writing is relevant and interesting.  It might even challenge you a little and will ultimately build up your skill set.  As if that wasn’t enough, the guy you’d be working with is talented and you’ll learn from him even if you’re not trying to.  Kind of makes me wish I had more time and experience with CF, and that I wasn’t having so much fun with an evolution right now.

Someone in the Google Group for Sinatra claims to have it working on Windows by removing all of the FileUtils#touch method.  He didn’t say what he put in it’s place and just removing it outright doesn’t seem to work.  I’m still working on it when time permits, so drop me a comment if you figure it out.