Preparing for a Workshop

Most workshops are a fluid combination of instruction, live coding demonstrations, and interactive lab sessions.

Students are encouraged to participate in the lab sessions by bringing a laptop to the workshop. Pairing up with someone else will also help maximize the value of the lab experience.

All attendees should have a working installation of Ruby 1.8.7, the Rails framework, and SQLite.

We recommend Mac or Linux for the best Rails experience. Rails development can be done on Windows as well, but some gems and external utilities (like Git) can be problematic.

If you need help setting up your laptop, these instructions can help. If you get stuck or have questions, feel free to email us for help.

General Instructions

Mac users

We recommend 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7.x (Lion), plus make sure you install the XCode Tools from the OS X install disc (or install from the Mac App Store).

You should also make sure you upgrade your version of RubyGems to the latest available.

Go to Installing Rails on Mac for details.

Windows users

We recommend Windows XP or Windows 7, but not Windows Vista.

Go to RailsInstaller.org and follow the instructions in Step 1, then watch the video in Step 2 to verify that you've got everything setup and working.