How to install Ruby on Rails with mysql and get it working, a step by step guide?

Question

Some time ago I managed to get RoR working on Windows XP. I've been trying to get it working on Windows 7 for 2 days but there's just no way, there's always a problem, one that google can't answer, no matter what I try.

Can someone give me a guide or something to get it working on Windows 7 or XP ? Even Ubuntu but I'd rather not go through that maze again.

I figure I'm going to install Windows XP on a virtual machine and start from there.

I need RoR and mysql - what versions, where do I download them from and what steps do I take ?

On a side note, how do you install mysql2 (version < 0.3) on rails 3.0.7 ? Because it automatically tries something over 0.3 which doesn't work on rails 3.0.7 and if I try the gemfile bundle trick with 0.2.7 I don't know how to specify configuration options and of course it doesn't work if I don't give it the location of mysql lib and include directories.

Also I tried using rails 3.1 beta and everything goes smoothly until I start the server and the website never loads on localhost:3000.

Solution 1

This is basically what I do to install on Windows 7:

• Download and install latest mysql from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/
• Install Ruby http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ (check the box to update PATH)
• Install Ruby Devkit http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ (for example extract to C:\DevKit)

• Setup Devkit

  cd [MY_DEVKIT_INSTALL_DIR]

  ruby dk.rb init

  ruby dk.rb install

• Copy libmysql.dll from your mysql/bin install to C:\Ruby192\bin

  gem install rails

  gem install mysql2 -v 0.2.6

  rails new my_test_app -d mysql

Solution 2

To setup Rails on windows, just download and click:

http://railsinstaller.org/

Solution 3

Take a look at http://rubyinstaller.org/ it should get you up and running.