Bob wrote: > I'm currently taking some time to re-examine my environment and wanted > to get the input from the minds that read these forums in an attempt > to piece together an ideal RoR environment. I'm trying to break out > each necessary aspect of a project and get thoughts and opinions on > what people think is the best tool for the function. For the sake of > discussion, I'd like to assume a Linux/UNIX based environment but I do > have a couple of projects running in Windows if anybody has any > thoughts in that department.
My thoughts: don't use Windows for *anything*. It's a bad server OS. It's a bad desktop OS. Avoid. My OS preferences: Mac OS X for development, Ubuntu Linux for server. They are the most pleasant and capable in each case IMHO. > If I've made any glaring > omissions...please tell me. > > My thanks for any feedback you can offer. > > > Testing - Cucumber, RSpec, and ApacheBenchmark. Using Cucumber for > the high-level tests and RSpec for low-level ones and AB for load- > testing. I was one of the people that learned Ruby and Rails and > ignored the testing features for a long time but I'm on board now and > believe this to be a good testing suite. I've never used ab. I highly, highly recommend Cucumber and RSpec. And of course, it goes without saying that all development is done story-first: write the Cucumber story, watch it fail, write the RSpec specs of what you need to implement the story, watch them fail, make them pass. > > Fixture-Creation - I am unfamiliar with this outside of rails > fixtures. I have been told that they aren't the best way to go and > that I should look into Factory Girl or Machinist as a replacement. Fixtures are broken. They should be removed from Rails. Under no circumstances should any Rails developer ever attempt to use them. Machinist is the way to go here, with Factory Girl a reasonable second choice (it's a bit more cumbersome). > > > Version-Control - I currently use SVN, but would be interested in > hearing arguments for learning Git. Do yourself a favor and get rid of Subversion today. Subversion is about the best centralized version control system that I'm aware of, but centralized version control is a paradigm with many problems. No project in 2010 should be without distributed version control. > > > Deployment - Capistrano...is there anything better? Not that I've heard of. > > > WebServer - I currently use Apache & Mongrel. I've heard/read good > things about Passenger and Nginx though. Is it worth switching to a > Passenger / Nginx solution or maybe some hybrid? Why are you torturing yourself with Apache and Mongrel? Passenger (and Ruby EE) is absolutely the right thing to use. It makes Rails deployment as easy as PHP deployment. Nginx is also probably a good choice. > > > Document-Generation - I have used both pdf-writer and prawn for PDFs > in the past. I have some windows projects that have generated word > and excel docs via win32ole. I spent a minimal amount of time trying > to generate OpenOffice docs but never had the proper time to devote to > getting it working. Rails is a Web framework. Word and Excel documents have no place on the Web -- they do not work well as interchange formats or play nicely with Web browsers. Do not design your Web applications in such a way that Word and Excel documents are generated -- that's just irresponsible. I use Prawn for PDF generation. At some point I plan to look at Flying Saucer and wkhtmltopdf. > > > Graphing - I have used Gruff in the past. I also played around with > ZiYa and found it to be an intriguing possibility. No experience here. I'd probably go with Google Charts/Visualizations up to the point where it stopped suiting my needs. > > > Thanks again for any thoughts. Now that I've typed it all out I'm > thinking maybe this should've been separated into separate posts for > clarity but as a start I hope this will do. > > Bob Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser http://www.marnen.org [email protected] -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
