Prerequisites for EasyProject
Easy Project is a Ruby on Rails application. As such, the requirements for installed software are very standard. They are:
- Ruby 1.8.4 or later
- Rails 1.1.6 or later
- Prototype Javascript Library (integrated with rails)
- Script.aculo.us Javascript Library (integrated with rails)
Ruby on Rails applications can be hosted on Windows, Linux and Macintosh servers. I recommend checking into the following hosting providers:
Modify configuration files
There are a few configuration files you'll need to be concerned with. First, is the database.yaml file. You'll need to update it to account for your database instance, user id and password.
The second configuration file you'll need to work on is only for users who are not running Rails version 1.2.2. If you're like me and your host hasn't updated yet, you might still be on 1.1.6. To fix the problems which may stem from this, edit the config\environment.rb file. Find the line which reads:
RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '1.2.2'
and change it to
RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '1.1.6'
Finally, when you install this, you'll need to edit the following files to make sure that you have set the proper path to the Ruby library.
- /public/dispatch.cgi
- /public/dispatch.fcgi
Since I'm developing on (gasp) Windows, my Ruby path is
#!C:/InstantRails/ruby/bin/ruby
When I deploy to Site5, I change this to
#!/usr/bin/ruby
Build the database
If you've gotten this far, you probably already know this. Just in case though, don't forget to run the rake command to build the database.
rake db:migrate
Update style sheet
Finally, in order to get this thing to look right, you'll probably have to update the stylesheet. When developing at http://localhost:3000, the values in the file are correct. However, when deploying to my remote server, I have to make some updates.
I have my Easy Project instance hosted in a directory called project. I have to find the image references in the CSS file and change the URL attribute from:
background: url(/images/headerbg-orange.gif);
to
background: url(/project/images/headerbg-orange.gif);