But running into an issue deploying a rails 3 application to some of our FreeBSD boxes. Some gems where requiring sudo access to be installed, even when getting installed to vendor/bundle. These where gems tat had native extensions. For example bcrypt-ruby.

** [err :: qix] /usr/bin/install -c -o root -g wheel -m 0755 bcrypt_ext.so /usr/local/www/power/releases/20100805141531/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.8/gems/bcrypt-ruby-2.1.2/lib
** [err :: qix] install: /usr/local/www/power/releases/20100805141531/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.8/gems/bcrypt-ruby-2.1.2/lib/bcrypt_ext.so: chown/chgrp: Operation not permitted
** [err :: qix] ** Error code 71


Turns out this was an easy fix, by modifying my capistrano Deploy recipe to set RB_USER_INSTALL="1"


task :bundle_new_release, :roles => :app do
bundler.create_symlink
run "cd #{release_path} && env RB_USER_INSTALL=\"1\" bundle install --deployment --without development test"
end


I am now able again to cleanly deploy...

It seems I like playing with programming languages and tools, more than I like coding I am constantly on the lookout for new (or old) tools that allow me to work/be more efficient. It is basically the "Ooh Shiny Syndrome". Surprisingly though, I've stuck with Ruby as my day to day language of choice. The same cannot be said for editors,version control systems and shells The rest of this is basically just me rambling about the tools I like / use and kinda how I come to use them..

So that being said, here is a breakdown of my current development setup.

I tend to bounce around between a lot of machines, running various Operating Systems. For example, my main laptop is a 17" Mac Book Pro running Snow Leopard. My main workstation at home is running Ubuntu 10.4. My netbook is also running Ubuntu 10.4 (Netbook Remix). My servers are Running Various versions of FreeBSD or Other *nixs. And I tend to hack on all of them, and wanted to have the same tools available on each.

Editors
I had been using Textmate on OSX, and did really enjoy using it, but when swapping over to one of the other boxes it wasn't available. So now my primary editor of choice is vim. Normally use the latest snapshot of MacVim when on the MBP, and the latest version of vim supported by either packages or ports. This gives me the same editor on any o the machines that I use, in both "gui" and "cli" versions. And if I find myself on a new *nix box, there is a pretty good chance vi will be there, so I will not be totally lost.

VCS
I like most geeks, started with RCS, then moved to CVS, then onto subversion, then onto git. I've since moved over to using Hg for most of my new development. Hard to say exactly why, but it just feels easier to use/grok to me. I spend most of my time in the cli, but Murky is a pretty nice Gui Client for OSX.

Shells
I've used bash for what seems like forever, mainly cause it was one of the first shells I was exposed to. But i've dabbled in both KSH and CSH. The one currently tickling my fancy for interactive use is zsh. Between the vcsinfo module, and it's completions (the ability to autocomplete across an ssh/scp connection totally rocks), make it ideal for me and my day to day use. For the majority shell scripting needs, I still tend to use just plain sh, so I can remain as cross platform as possible.

IRB Plugins
Hacking in ruby, I find myself spending a decent amount of time in IRB (or the rails console) Which is great for testing out ideas and the like. I've found a couple of plugins that help me out in this regards. The 2 that I am currently making use of are Awesome Print and bond. Ap provides some nice formatting on IRBS output that allows you to easily look into data structures, and bond is better code completion support.

Keeping it all together
Since I've been using HG for my development needs, I also keep all of my dotfiles in a repo. This allows me to keep a history of my changes, and also allows an easy way to keep them updated on each of my machines. If you are interested in what I am currently using there is read-only access to them at My Dotfiles. I like the fact that I can use ruby in the irbrc file to conditionally set options based on the presence of certain gems. I use a Rakefile to handle the install of the various files in their correct places. Feel free to steal^h borrow anything you like, as I've borrowed it from a bunch of way smarter people than myself. Or let me know if you have questions on how anything works..

Ok so finally getting back to hacking (although the typing is a bit slow due to silly me cutting the middle finger on my left hand with a razor blade stripping wire--but I digress).

Am basically scrapping my old code and starting afresh, so just some quick notes on how I was setting up a new rails app (mainly so I don't forget the next time I need to do it).

create an empty git repos on my central server (mainly for backups / sharing).

GIT_DIR=proj.git git init

On my devel workstation start off with your standard rails app.

rails appname

.gitignore << END
log/*.log
tmp/**/*
.DS_Store
doc/api
doc/app
END

touch log/.gitignore
touch tmp/.gitignore

git commit -m "Initial Commit"

Now need to push changes out to our central server

git remote add origin ssh://centralserver/proj.git
git push origin master

Now following a combination of Ryan Bates Railscast Gitting Rails 2.1RC1 and Graeme Mathieson's Using Git Submodules to track Vendor Rails snag a copy of edge rails into vendor rails, and update scripts,etc...

git submodule add git://github.com/rails/rails.git vendor/rails
rake rails:update
git commit -m "Imports Rail's Head as Submodule"
git push origin master

And now we are ready to do some coding.

Mainly so I don't forget..

Was going to convert some of my old perl code over to Ruby, perhaps looking to redo my graphing/management over to Rails as well. In order to do that I needed access to the ruby bindings for RRDTool. It appears that mac ports doesn't have a variant to install the bindings, and installing them via source was failing. Some googling pointed me to this Post
from Mike Perham. Which got me closer, but it appears I had to set the ARCH flags as well as outlined here.

so the final solution was

cd rrdtool-1.2.27/bindings/ruby/
ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" ruby extconf.rb –with-rrd-dir=/opt/local
make
sudo make install

This was driving me up a wall since it installed Easily on my FreeBSD servers at the office and on my powermac. Well guess you learn something new everyday.

So got the new Mac Book Pro, and wow it is quick. Did a clean install and then migrated what I wanted over so I would have everything clean / fresh and not worry about any legacy / crufty bits. So as of now I am set, and it works great. Not sure how much more productive I am.

On a related note, I traded some OT to be able to keep my powerbook, so that is now a backup machine @ home.

So I joined the Tech Valley Ruby Brigade a couple months back. Is great to hang out with like minded people and talk code. Our last meeting we had Chris M from Rubyology and he talked about Wuby. It is a neat little project, and I've been digging into the code a bit. One of our members was talking adding pid/kill support directly to it. So after the meeting I dug in and hacked some code to do just that. I will probably do a bit more hacking/poking at it as time permits. I am still working on getting more comfortable with ruby (years of perl and php breed some interesting habits..)

Left alaska a couple of hours ago, fresh from being built in China. So in theory I should be at least 10x more productive Was time to upgrade the laptops at $DAY_JOB, so wound up getting a nice 17" Hi-Def MBP. So now I just need to get off my butt and get some work done.

Taking a break from my market research, and catching up on some TV by trying to clean out the DVR. So while fast forwarding through commercials, I see the mac vs pc with santa claus. Animation was cool, and funny like all of the. Get a Mac ads @ Apple if you haven't seen it yet. It made me smile and actually stop and rewind the dvr to watch the full thing, which now-a-days is a rarity.
You might wonder why I am posting this, well my current development environment is mac based, and I am admitted fan of their hardware (I am posting this from my 17" powerbook G4 running Leopard).

Ok figure every startup needs to have a blog right? So this is ours..

So we are Just Another Web StartUp (and no, that isn't the name of the project... That is in stealth mode right now). We know startups are a dime a dozen these days, but ours is going to be different and change the world, and revolutionize something or other. Heck perhaps we just miss the days of Bubble 1.0 and want to relive the glory, the pain, the agony, the caffeine.

Well time to get back to coding and maybe, just maybe working on a business plan. Nah that would make too much sense, so back to finding out what they've changed in Rails 2.0, and wasting time (err market research) on Twitter, Digg, Pownce, etc...