Software Development | Ruby on Rails
Installing altered_beast on Windows

Having failed at getting adva-cms working I thought I'd see if I could just get a forum going.  The choices seem to be.

  • Beast - was "the" Ruby on Rails forum a couple of years ago. Now defunct
  • Altered_Beast - a ground up rewrite of Beast by one of the founders (Courtenay)
  • El Dorado - new kid on the block and seems to have legs

I thought I'd give Altered_Beast because I have looked at Beast in the past and because, I believe, it supports Restful authentication, which El Dorado doesn't.

I installed commit d327bb75ca4d9cd1a95cfed84676b16e3c6f923c from GitHub.

The Full Monty

This is the final set of commands to get it running. All run from the command line and starting in rails_apps: 

git clone git://github.com/courtenay/altered_beast.git
cd altered_beast
gem install rails --version 2.3.3
mkdir log
rake tmp:create
cd /config 
ren database.sample.yml database.yml
cd ..
gem install rspec
gem install rspec-rails
gem install highline
gem install RedCloth
gem install bluecloth
gem install ruby-openid
gem install ruby-debug -v 0.9.3
mysqladmin -u root create altered_beast
mysqladmin -u root create altered_beast_test
rake app:bootstrap
ruby script/server

 

Get the altered_beast code

I found a few problems with the installation instructions at Getting Altered_Beast Up and Running. This is my version ... all run from the command line and starting in rails_apps: 

git clone git://github.com/courtenay/altered_beast.git
cd altered_beast
gem install rails --version 2.3.3
gem list --local rails
rails --version
mkdir log
rake tmp:create
cd /config 
ren database.sample.yml database.yml
cd ..

Rails version 2.3.3

Altered_Beast needs Rails version 2.3.3 installed to work.  You do this with the "gem install rails --version 2.3.3" command.  

cd altered_beast
gem install rails --version 2.3.3

You'll end up with multiple versions of Rails installed. The command "gem list --local rails" will tell you which ones.  I have 2.3.5, 2.3.3, 2.0.2 on my machine. The command "rails --version" tells you which one is running by default. I didn't get the bottom of whether just having 2.3.3 installed was sufficient for Altered_Beast. 

gem list --local rails
rails --version

database.yml

You'll notice I created a database.yml by renaming database.sample.yml. This is because the command "rake gems:install" expects this file to exist. So I presume one of the component gems needs it. The real database is created at the end of the process (see below). 

cd /config 
ren database.sample.yml database.yml
cd ..

Prerequisite gems

The next step is to install the pre-requisites including:

  1. rspec
  2. rspec-rails
  3. highline
  4. RedCloth (notice mixed case name)
  5. bluecloth
  6. ruby-openid
  7. will_paginate (not mislav-will_paginate as the official instructions say)
  8. ruby-debug

Getting Altered_Beast Up and Running recommends a rake command to get all the missing gems but it always failed for me for one reason or other: 

rake gems:install

The most recent time I ran this command I got this error:

gem.bat install RedCloth --source http://code.whytheluckystiff.net
ERROR: http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/ does not appear to be a repository
ERROR: could not find gem RedCloth locally or in a repository

So instead of running the rake command I went for individual installs. Notice that some of the gem names are in mixed case - the names are case sensitive. 

gem install rspec
gem install rspec-rails
gem install highline
gem install RedCloth
gem install bluecloth
gem install ruby-openid
gem install mysql

Ruby-debug

It was fine until ruby-debug. I you try this you'll get an error:

gem install ruby-debug

The error was:

ERROR: Error installing ruby-debug:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

C:/InstantRails-2.0/ruby/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb
creating Makefile

nmake
'nmake' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

nmake is a Microsoft make utility that comes with Visual Studio. As it happens I've got Visual Studio installed so I could follow Amitava's Technical Diary: Gem Install Ruby-Debug fails in Windows and manually run the make. But there is a simpler way ... install an older version of ruby-debug. The problematic version is ruby-debug 0.10.0. This version doesn't build correctly on windows whereas 0.9.3 comes with a precompiled binary (Mentioned by Java on Ruby on Rails: Ruby-debug in Windows Vista). To install the Windows friendly version: 

gem install ruby-debug -v 0.9.3

Create the Database and Admin User

The last step, which I haven't  got to yet, is:

mysqladmin -u root create altered_beast
rake app:bootstrap

The first step creates the database. The rake builds the database.yml, loads the database, builds the first site, and the admin user.

Have a Look

Start the web server

ruby script/server

Then visit http://localhost:3000 in your favourite browser.

Copying altered_beast

When I got around to building on top of altered_beast I saw no need to go through the whole palaver above.  I copied the whole altered_beast directory into a new one (my_copy), then created the databases and run the boostrap. Took maybe 2 minutes. 

cd my_copy 
mysqladmin -u root create my_copy
mysqladmin -u root create my_copy_test
rake app:bootstrap
ruby script/server