Setting up Ruby on Rails for web development

Any OS where Ruby on Rails is optimal or any general advice I should know

Linux and Mac OS are by far the most popular dev OS's for Rails - you can install dependencies much easier.

Windows can be a real pain with Rails at first. Not rails, but its dependencies. These are called Gems and work like plugins.

Certain gems require external binaries / C headers for them to run. Two of the most notorious are the MYSQL2 and RMagick (ImageMagick) gems.

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I don't know the core problems (it's something to do with MINGW32 / Win32 environment), but Windows often has a difficult time with certain gems.

Not that it's stopped us - we have a series of Windows machines devs use to create truly incredible RoR apps (very difficult to get them all running smoothly).

DB

You don't get a DB with your Rails install - you need to have that running separately.

If you don't want to install a local MYSQL server (which can be a pain), I'd recommend getting some cheap shared hosting (with unlimited MYSQL db's). This will allow you to hook up your app to a third party DB host, negating any data integrity issues if your dev machine has problems.

Make sure you have PHPMYAdmin too - it's a life saver :)

Although Rails with many different SQL variants, MYSQL is the most popular. Heroku has made PGSQl quite popular within the Rails community, although I'm not up to speed on the major differences.

how does Ruby on Rails work with a local server

Rails comes with its own web server for development, called WEBrick.

Honestly, WEBrick is a pile of shit but it works.

You just need to load up the cmd, type rails s and it will fire it up. If you get some more experience, you can use the likes of puma or thin as dev servers (they are much faster and better mimic the production environment)

In production, you'll be best using one of the commercial-grade servers like Apache or NGinX, good tutorial here.

Getting Started

There are a ton of tutorials to get started with Rails.

Some of the best resources are:

• RailsCasts (stopped mid 2013)
• GoRails (still active)
• Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial

Finally, enjoy yourself. I remember the Tumblr guy saying that he got such initial traction for Tumblr through the Rails community (he said they're the most committed bunch ever). He was right, the Rails community is a big family who all love code.