HowTo: Windows + RubyStack + Aptana RadRails + Ruby Debug

Thought I would make this a new topic. It collates information relating to getting a good development environment running on a windows box (for free):

After following these steps you should have an Aptana RadRails intstalltion, which RubyStack’s Ruby, Rails, ImageMagick and other libraries, and provides visual debugging.

1. Download and Install:
   • RubyStack – http://bitnami.org/stack/rubystack
   • Aptana Studio – http://www.aptana.com/studio/download
2. Configure:
   • Aptana
     • Open Aptana, run Help > Aptana Studio Start Page.
     • Under the central Languages division, find Ruby on Rails, click Install.
       • Check ‘Aptana RadRails’, but UNCHECK the ‘Aptana RadRails Integration’ descendant (this will cause a problem if you do not use MyLyn).
       • Install and Restart
     • Open Window > Preferences > Ruby > Installed Interpreters
       • Click Add RubyVM, enter {RubyStack root directory}\ruby in the RubyVM home directory’ field’
       • Check the RubyVM you just added as the default interpreter
     • Open Window > Preferences > Rails > Configuration
       • Enter the path to the RubyStack Rails, Rake, and Mongrel Rails executables, respectively:
         • {RubyStack root directory}\ruby\bin\rails
         • {RubyStack root directory}\ruby\bin\rake
         • {RubyStack root directory}\ruby\bin\mongrel_rails
     • Open Window > Preferences > Ruby > Debugger
       • Check ‘Use ruby-debug library’
   • Ruby:
     • Run {RubyStack root directory}\use_ruby.bat
       • Enter the command:
         • gem install -y ruby-debug-ide
3. Environment Variables (replace C:\RubyStack with your {RubyStack root directory}):
   • Open Control Panel > System Properties > Advanced
     • Click Environment Variables
       • Edit ‘PATH’ and prepend:
         • C:\RubyStack/sqlite;C:\RubyStack/subversion\bin;C:\RubyStack/imagemagick;
           C:/RubyStack/php;C:\RubyStack/mysql\bin;C:\RubyStack\ruby\bin;
       • Add the variable ‘MAGICK_CODER_MODULE_PATH’, with value:
         • C:\RubyStack/imagemagick\modules\coders

Then you are finished.

Now, when you run Aptana you should be able to add/start ruby servers in debug mode or otherwise. Additionally any features used in your application residing in RubyStack should work.

Note that this breaks the containment of RubyStack, and it would be easy to call the scripts/setenv.bat file from another batch file before opening Aptana to achieve the same effect without altering environment variables.

Thanks Silas! Good how-to. We owe you a bier :)

Great! Now everything works fine .. thanks!

Regarding Environment Variables

There seem to be a bunch more variables in setenv.bat these days. I liked Silas’s suggestion of using another batch file to avoid breaking the containment on RubyStack… so I went ahead and did just that!

My file paths:
C:\rubystack – my RubyStack install
C:\radrails – my RadRails install
C:\ror – my Projects folder

Created a new Shortcut on my desktop with the following Properties:
Target: C:\ror\use_rubystack_and_open_radrails.bat
Start in: C:\radrails

Copied C:\rubystack\use_ruby.bat into C:\ror and named it use_rubystack_and_open_radrails.bat

Edited use_rubystack_and_open_radrails.bat to run AptanaRadRails.exe AFTER the standard use_ruby.bat code had run (in particular calling setenv.bat – which sets the PATH’s required for Ruby Interactive (RI) to work in RadRails and also to Start/Stop the server in RadRails and have everything work as expected – previously I had to start the server in Console via “ruby script/server” in the projects dir for things to work.

Here’s the Batch file I created for RubyStack 2.0-1

use_rubystack_and_open_radrails.bat
-——————————————————————————-
@echo off
CALL C:\RUBYST~1\scripts\setenv.bat"
REM if not exist “USERPROFILE\BitNami RubyStack projects” mkdir “USERPROFILE\BitNami RubyStack projects”
REM cd "%USERPROFILE%\BitNami RubyStack projects

if not exist “C:\ror” mkdir “C:\ror”
cd “C:\ror”

START “BitNami RubyStack Environment” cmd

cd “C:\radrails”

START AptanaRadRails.exe
-——————————————————————————-

Hope this helps others… I was scratching my head for a long time until I realised that PATH not being set was causing so many issues.

Thanks for posting your solution. I’m sure that this post would be helpful for other users.