Ruby and Rails on Windows Finally Simple?
Remember a bit ago when Wayne E. Seguin of RVM Fame (I think he should legally change his name to that BTW) was hired by Engine Yard to do, among other things, help get Rails working properly on Windows? Well, looks like in only weeks of work, there is now Ruby and Rails on Windows in a Single, Easy Install.
If this works as advertised (haven’t had a chance to test it yet), then this is huge in giving Ruby on Rails a big edge into the Windows world, and eliminates the need for such hacky (sorry Curtis) solutions like this, previously the “best” way to run Rails on Windows 
Not only that, but this gives Rails on Windows almost the same advantage it has for development on Mac and Linux: stupidly low barrier to entry. Rails has always been easy to program in, but you had to get it up and running first. On Mac it’s been included in the OS for a few versions of Mac OS, on Linux it’s been as easy as “apt-get install rails” (or equivalent), and now on windows it’ll be as easy as “go to http://railsinstaller.org/, download and clicky clicky”.
January 18th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
My one question, is this also an installer appropriate for deployment to a Windows Server 2003/2008 running IIS6/7?
January 18th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Ruby 1.8.7? I’ll wait. Last time I tried to run Rails3 with Ruby 1.8.7 it failed completely. RailsFTW may be a hack, but it’s better. What they should focus on is speeding it up. Generators and tests are painfully slow in Rails3 on Windows.
January 18th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
^^ Ignore me, RailsFTW will no longer be supported in favor of RailsInstaller.
January 18th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
It’s a good start anyway. Looks like basically a pre-installed bunch of software in a nice package, not something uber-tuned for windows. Either way still a good first step.
@Foz – It looks like it’s contained under c:\railsinstaller for the software (git/ruby/etc) and c:\sites for the default location for apps. I have no idea if there are built in hooks or software to serve rails sites from a windows server with something other than the built in webrick. In theory if there’s a way to do that in windows you just need to point it to c:\sites….
April 13th, 2011 at 11:54 am
I began using rails in Windows about a year ago, because I was most familiar with that OS. However, it was so god-awful slow and buggy, and not to mention most every screen cast or tutorial is aimed at Mac (which is basically pretty Linux), that moving to Linux made a lot of sense. Haven’t looked back, it’s been just so much better. Don’t know that I would ever care to program rails in windows ever again.