Setting up Ruby on Rails 3 on Mac OSX Lion

Here was my base development environment:

• Mac OSX Lion (it came pre-installed on mac air)
• XCode 4.2.1 (installed together with IOS 5 SDK)
• Ruby 1.8 (Came with Lion)

The steps I took to install Rails 3 are as follows:

(1) I followed the instructions on how to install RVM.

bash << (curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

(2) Next I installed Ruby 1.9.3

sudo rvm install 1.9.3

(3) Then, I set the default ruby version to use

rvm list

rvm use 1.9.3-p0 --default

ruby --version (just to check)

(4) Finally installed Rails

gem install rails --no-ri --no-rdoc

You can test it with
rails new mytestapp
cd mytestapp
rails server

(5) Some additional tools which I found useful

Use Homebrew, which describes itself as “the easiest and most flexible way to install the UNIX tools Apple didn’t include with OS X”. Run the installer:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

For example, using Homebrew to install mysql

brew install mysql

I referred to this excellent guide on how to install rails on Lion
http://thelastpixel.net/2011/09/05/preparing-mac-osx-lion-for-rails-development/