The first step is to install some dependencies for Ruby.

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties

Next we're going to be installing Ruby using one of three methods. Each have their own benefits, most people prefer using rbenv these days, but if you're familiar with rvm you can follow those steps as well. I've included instructions for installing from source as well, but in general, you'll want to choose either rbenv or rvm.

Choose one method. Some of these conflict with each other, so choose the one that sounds the most interesting to you, or go with my suggestion, rbenv.

sudo apt-get install libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev automake libtool bison libffi-devcurl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stablesource ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm echo "source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm" >> ~/.bashrcrvm install 2.1.2 rvm use 2.1.2 --defaultruby -v

The last step is to tell Rubygems not to install the documentation for each package locally

echo "gem: --no-ri --no-rdoc" > ~/.gemrc

Configuring Git

We'll be using Git for our version control system so we're going to set it up to match our Github account. If you don't already have a Github account, make sure to . It will come in handy for the future.

Replace my name and email address in the following steps with the ones you used for your Github account.

git config --global color.ui true git config --global user.name "YOUR NAME" git config --global user.email "YOUR@EMAIL.com" ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "YOUR@EMAIL.com"

The next step is to take the newly generated SSH key and add it to your Github account. You want to copy and paste the output of the following command and .

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Once you've done this, you can check and see if it worked:

ssh -T git@github.com

You should get a message like this:

Hi excid3! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Installing Rails

Since Rails ships with so many dependencies these days, we're going to need to install a Javascript runtime like NodeJS. This lets you use Coffeescript and the in Rails which combines and minifies your javascript to provide a faster production environment.

To install NodeJS, we're going to add it using a PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.jssudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install nodejs

And now, without further adieu:

gem install rails

If you're using rbenv, you'll need to run the following command to make the rails executable available:

rbenv rehash

Now that you've installed Rails, you can run therails -vcommand to make sure you have everything installed correctly:

rails -v # Rails 4.1.1

If you get a different result for some reason, it means your environment may not be setup properly.

Setting Up MySQL

Rails ships with sqlite3 as the default database. Chances are you won't want to use it because it's stored as a simple file on disk. You'll probably want something more robust like MySQL or PostgreSQL.

There is a lot of documentation on both, so you can just pick one that seems like you'll be more comfortable with. If you're coming from PHP, you may already be familiar with MySQL. If you're new to databases, I'd suggest skipping to .

You can install MySQL server and client from the packages in the Ubuntu repository. As part of the installation process, you'll set the password for the root user. This information will go into your Rails app'sdatabase.ymlfile in the future.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev

Installing thelibmysqlclient-devgives you the necessary files to compile themysql2gem which is what Rails will use to connect to MySQL when you setup your Rails app.

When you're finished, you can .

Setting Up PostgreSQL

For PostgreSQL, we're going to add a new repository to easily install a recent version of Postgres 9.3.

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ precise-pgdg main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list" wget --quiet -O - http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install postgresql-commonsudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3 libpq-dev

The postgres installation doesn't setup a user for you, so you'll need to follow these steps to create a user with permission to create databases. Feel free to replacechriswith your username.

sudo -u postgres createuser chris -s # If you would like to set a password for the user, you can do the following sudo -u postgres psqlpostgres=# \password chris

Final Steps

And now for the moment of truth. Let's create your first Rails application:

#### If you want to use SQLite (not recommended) rails new myapp #### If you want to use MySQL rails new myapp -d mysql #### If you want to use Postgres # Note that this will expect a postgres user with the same username # as your app, you may need to edit config/database.yml to match the # user you created earlier rails new myapp -d postgresql # Move into the application directory cd myapp # If you setup MySQL or Postgres with a username/password, modify the # config/database.yml file to contain the username/password that you specified  # Create the database rake db:createrails server

You can now visit to view your new website!

Now that you've got your machine setup, it's time to start building some Rails applications.

If you received an error that saidAccess denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)then you need to update your config/database.yml file to match the database username and password.