Disclaimer: I know ruby since quite long as language and i am a experienced programmer from the Java corner, but haven't really dealt deeply with the whole eco - culture of Ruby. I always liked Ruby, but only now I am starting to use Rubygems with Bundler and i am impressed. So i am assuming there is an easy answer to my question , which proves my ignorance ;-)
One thing i really like about gems and bundler is that you can package and distribute libraries and applications or even both... neat.
Let's keep it simple. Let's say i have a script, which does something in a database and which want to package and distribute with bundler with enterprise specific gems server. For the configuration of this script i need a db url, a userid and a password. The password should likely be encrypted. This configuration should be externalized in a host resp. installation specific config file.
In the Java Spring Boot world, where i am coming from , they have this mechanism with application.properties which can be a mix of build time, installation and runtime parameters and can be accessed through a common api.
I saw in the bundler documentation that one pass the local configuration file upon installation time : https://bundler.io/v1.5/bundle_config.html. Neat. But i am not quite sure how this could/ should work in detail. Here real world examples would help...
Is there a canonical form to have and deal with installation specific configurations for ruby apps distributed with gems and bundler?
Any pointers , input , feedback is very welcome.
There is no universal setting storage system in Ruby applications.
dotenv is popular for plain Ruby applications. Rails has its own system.
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I am new to Ruby and I have written a small app, that consists of around 50 .rb files and 6 folders. The purpose of app is to be an SDK for Ruby users, to interact with my API. It also uses few gems. Now I want to release this app for specific users, but looking at the internet for the solution really confused me (may be just because I'm new to it) and MOST of the posts found were for Rails
Being through several posts, what I find to be reasonable is to make a gem out of it and publish this gem at rubygems.org. (but this also makes it fully public)
Question:
Is this the correct approach in my specific scenario?
How can I manage the dependencies? (This part is very confusing, I will need more guidelines on this)
How to limit audience? (I have personal git server, would this be of any help)
Other Info:
App is developed in Ruby version 2.1.8, It makes http Get/Post requests using TLS, and is NOT a Rails or web app
I have been through several SO posts like THIS, THIS etc. But I couldn't understand it for my case.
I created a project in Jetbrains' IDE, called RubyMine. My project doesn't have bin folder, etc. but only my own folders and .rb files. And most of the solutions also talk about bin.
Any help will be appreciated.
Gemfury is probably what you're looking for. You'll package your library as a gem the same way as if you were going to publish it publicly on RubyGems, but Gemfury lets you restrict access to it to only the people you want to allow.
I have read through Q&A/articles that explain the ideal structure of a Ruby project. I read the RubyGems guides on how to create a Ruby gem. I have just read a Q&A asking at what point a ruby project becomes a ruby gem but I can not for the life of me see the difference between the two. The structure seems to be the same. The files, where they go, everything looks the same to me. Is it how they're used? Can someone please explain the difference between the two to me?
The question that must be answered respect to 'Gemify' or not is: am I writing something that is readily reusable in a different context? If the answer is yes then your application is a candidate for 'Gemification'. If not then generally it is not worth the additional complexity to convert a Ruby project into a Gem.
For example. If one makes a CLI Ruby application that collects mortgage rates from multiple vendors and updates a database then there are two ways this could be converted into a gem.
First: You could generalise the interface/configuration and make it useful as a plugin/add-on/extension to projects written by someone needing the same or similar functionality. So someone could add the gemified version to their project and use it to do the grunt work for them and just make use of the results. This describes the most common use case for gems.
Second: However, you could also extract the framework of your CLI project layout into a generator gem for others to easily create their own CLI project layouts. This is how Rails came to be.
I'm new to running a Linux server and slowly getting up to speed with things.
I have already installed nginx via the apt-get function, although I'm following a tutorial which recommends installing it as a ruby gem instead.
Is there any difference in the functionality/limitations to installing it as a gem than by using apt-get? - I'm worried that it won't work for non-ruby applications if it is gem installed?
Is there any difference in the functionality/limitations to installing it as a gem than by using apt-get? - I'm worried that it won't work for non-ruby applications if it is gem installed?
There aren't any limitations on the version of Nginx that Passenger installs for you. You should be able to use it with other languages as you normally would (providing you know how to configure Nginx.) I was able to use it to connect to both Ruby and Node.js sites with no problems.
The people at Phusion have a nice page explaining why they are forced to provide their own version of Nginx (rather than using the standalone one) and it comes down to the fact that Nginx does not allow to be extended at runtime. Extensions like Passenger must be compiled into it. See this page for more information on it: https://github.com/phusion/passenger/wiki/Why-can%27t-Phusion-Passenger-extend-my-existing-Nginx%3F
(Note: When I tested this I used the installation instructions from the Phusion web site https://www.phusionpassenger.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Nginx.html#install_on_debian_ubuntu , rather than the gem that is indicated in your tutorial, but I suspect they are both equivalent.)
I have run into this too. Where I am recommended to use one package manager over the other. I would question the age of the tutorial first, if it is not relatively recent you may want to consider if the information is no longer up to date. The libraries installed with that method may not be up to date.
However, if you intend to follow through with the tutorial you may end up needing it installed as the tutorial describes.
The difference is that one may not have all the libraries that are required or may not have the most up to date version. One tool could be buggy, I don't think this is the case in your situation but it is in Macports v.s Homebrew in my opinion. It might install to a different directory based on what install method you use, if you use a method off the web and then go back to the tutorial it could be installed to a different location then your tutorial expects.
If you have to follow the tutorial then I would all the way through, but if you don't need to use the preferred method that the program/library maintainers recommend. If the tutorial is out of date you could try to find an up to date tutorial.
good luck!
Why should I/should I not use RVM?
I'm new to the ruby language and servers as a whole. I've had some trouble installing using RVM...so I'm inclined to not use it right now, but it seems like it may make installations down the road easier?
I'm interested to hear about your experience with RVM and your thoughts as it pertains to maintaining a server.
RVM is useful even if you don't want to install multiple versions at the same time. I'm a ruby hobbyist (PHP during the day :(), and I have no reason to want to use old versions, but I still use RVM.
Installing ruby is a pain. Getting it from the package manager (at least in ubuntu) gives you an outdated version that changes installation directories from the defaults. I've had nothing but problems with it.
So you think, "I'll just build it from source". Building from source requires getting a load of dependencies and configuring options. Often times I've built ruby only to find out I forgot to enable SSL support or readline support.
RVM takes care of all of this. In 3 or so commands, you have a perfectly built version of ruby.
And I didn't even cover how RVM manages multiple ruby installations for you, which is its killer feature. If you have that need, there is really no other sane solution.
RVM is great as this allows your to install different versions without touching your system's default Ruby install. It is rather similar to virtualenv's in Python.
Another great advantage to having RVM are the gemsets - you can create as many gemsets that are unique to the version, and patch level, of ruby.
I've extolled some of its virtues here and you should also see this blog post.
In terms of maintaining a server - let's take a Passenger install for example; do remember that Passenger is installed as a gem, so with rvm the benefit here is that you can have multiple installs of passenger, tied to a different version of ruby. Of course, typically, you'll have Passenger running on one version at a time, although there are ways to have Passenger, in particular, running on different ruby versions.
I use different Ruby versions for different projects (that's where .rvmrc is really handy). Some deployment environments are happy with 1.9, while there are a couple of legacy servers using 1.8 for some reasons. Also, occasionally I want to launch a specific version of ruby to compare how they work. RVM does all that for me.
When you are first getting used to Ruby, it may not entirely be necessary. That said, what it does is set you up for success in the future. Because once you get hooked, you may end up playing with projects that need to move from, say, MRI 1.8.x to 1.9.x. Or from 1.9.x, to JRuby 1.6.x. My experience is that this happens irregularly, but when it does, there's no substitute for RVM.
Outside of that, the other biggest feature that I use regularly, is the ability to segment one particular release. So I can have an environment for 'stable' gems, and an environment for 'unstable' gems. For instance, while Rails 3.1 has been in release candidate mode, I've had one main workspace for 1.9.2 and a separate space for Rails 3.1.rc? gems on 1.9.2. That makes it possible for me to keep developing my main Rails 3.0 stuff (with one command at the CLI), without having to specify full file paths to the appropriate rails bin files in order to use the older files.
If you're using a Debian based platform where the packagers/policy leads to a really bad default installation you'll have a way better experience using rvm.
Me and my team are starting to build up a few re-usable scripts. They're re-usable within our org only as they work with proprietry apps and our particular server environment. So not really suitable for rubyforge or github, etc.
My question is, what is the best practice for ensuring we're all using the latest and greatest scripts across all users? We pretty much run these scripts on one server, but may need to expand to others.
Should we bundle them into gem(s) and start a private gem server?
Or something simpler like a common, shareable lib directory. Perhaps with a script to download/update from our SCM?
Other ideas?
Thanks....
This depends on some factors, like how many people want to change the code (only your team, or someone else too), or how much money you have for this?
Personally I'd create a build+gem server, where you can upload the scripts using some versioning system (like git or svn, depends on how many people are working on the project), and then create a cron job, that would automatically genereate the gems from the sources at generic intervals and store them as different versions. This way you can be sure that you always have an authorative server that stores your applications gems, and you can always get an earlier version if something breaks. Your script might create separate gem version names, like "appserv-edge" or "appserv-stable"
You might also want to check out github's closed source options too, if you have the money to afford that. I don't know however whether they have gem building and hosting facilities for non open-source programs.
I've created a private gemserver and it's dead easy. The only tricky bit is deciding how you want your users to upload gems. Personally, I just use a PHP upload form, and have it check to make sure that it's not masking any existing gems.
At my office we're using a bit of a hybrid approach for some of our shared scripts and libs. We do bundle them all in to a gem, but rather than using a gem server we keep them in source control, and then build the gem (using newgem) and install it locally as necessary.
The downside of this approach is that it takes two commands instead of one to install the gem, but this is largely mitigated in qa and production environments, since we use Capistrano for deployment.
The upsides are that it's dead simple, and in development there is a very short edit/build/deploy cycle if you're working with something that requires changes to the gem. I'm currently pulling a lot of common functionality in to the shared gem, so I'm really appreciating that aspect.