There are many good sources of info on setting up web servers and databases for Ruby on Rails applications, but the topic is far too complex to get into here. We use mongrel with sqlite3 in development, and lighttpd in front of mongrel with mysql in production.
Dependencies
You'll need all this stuff installed before trying to install Informl. I'll describe here what we're using and how we are getting it. If you try other set-ups, and they work, please let us know. If you are new to Rails and want help, Ruby on Rails is a good place to start.
- Subversion
- Ruby — you'll probably do best with version 1.8.4 or later
- Ruby Gems — eg
sudo gem install tartan
- ferret
- hpricot
- tartan (currently 0.2.0)
- Ruby on Rails version 1.2.3 or greater (1.2.2 has a bug that affects informl)
- A database and the appropriate Ruby libraries:
Quick installation instructions
- make sure you have the gems listed above
tar xvfz informl-0_4_0.tgzrake db:demo:setup (to use built-in sqlite database)script/server- browse to
localhost:3000
Installing from subversion
- Get Informl from RubyForge:
svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/informl/trunk informl
- note that each svn version of informl bypasses the tartan gem, and is frozen to a particular version of the tartan svn repository
- Use the provided demo database setup (sqlite3):
rake db:demo:setup
(this will setup config/database.yml and an sqlite development database containing demo content).
- Run the server:
script/server
- Point your browser to
localhost:3000
How to setup your own database configuration
- Set up your database (eg in mysql, create the database and user, grant permissions).
- Edit
config/database.yml accordingly. The rest of these instructions assume the development environment.
- Run
rake db:migrate (this will create all the database tables).
- That's it -- run your server, use your browser. You will be prompted to create an initial book. (See wiki organization for more info on books.)