daeltar's

How to setup your Mac for RoR development

1) Developer tools – install Xcode

2) Package manager homebrew

We will install homebrew + some common packages (git, ImageMagick, PostgreSQL, …) into /usr/local and take ownership over directory. This way we will not need to use sudo and all binaries will be in our $PATH (because /usr/local/bin is by default).

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local
ruby -e "$(curl -fsS http://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)"
brew install wget git postgresql sqlite imagemagick

To initialize a database cluster for PostgreSQL use initdb /usr/local/var/postgres. (it will be owned by your user, again, it should not be problem)

3) Ruby version manager – rvm

RVM allows you to have multiple rubies (1.8.7, 1.9.2, jruby, ..) in parallel. It installs everything into your home directory, so again, you can forget about sudo and messing with $PATH variable. Run as normal user:

bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )
echo 'if [[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]]  ; then source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ; fi' >> .bashrc

Open new tab in terminal and rvm should work (be sure your .bash_profile contains source $HOME/.bashrc).

Now you can install last ruby 1.8.7 and set it as default:

rvm install 1.8.7
rvm use 1.8.7 --default
gem install bundler rails capistrano unicorn

Additional ruby interprets can be installed such as:

rvm install 1.9.2
rvm use 1.9.2

4) Git GUI and text editor

• GitX
• TextMate

5) You are all set

I would suggest using bundler for managing your project gems (even on RoR 2.3.x). Than just cd PROJECT_PATH; bundle install and ejoy simple management of rubies and packages via rvm and homebrew.

Evolution of tools, spring edition

I got more into GTD. I started using Things.app for managing personal and most of work related task. In our Fakturoid startup we moved from Backpack to Basecamp for project management. It is great, but it is slow. I bought iPhone which is great gaming device, mobile web browser, organizer, calendar, map and you can call and text too :). It brings some crazy and useful concepts.

New HW

• That iPhone 3GS.
• Magic Mouse from Apple. 
• New external HDD box with old disk. Time Machine enabled.
• SSD in MBP - that is game-changer. Way faster, instant application opening, definitely worth money.

iPhone apps

• first screen: Ego, Things, Tweetie, Reeder, Articles
• second: Skype, Dropbox, Meebo, 1Password, TouchTerm, Foursquare
• games: GoldRush, Plants vs. Zombies, Gelex, Spider, Dungeon Hunter

What tools I use

Hardware

Mac Book Pro 15" as my main station. When home, paired with Apple Keyboard, Logitech bluetooth mouse and 24" HP ISP LCD panel.  It is connected via Wi-Fi or via ethernet to router and therefore to home backup server (whitebox with big drives). I have photo of my desk on deskography.

Software

Text editor, web browser and terminal application can be run on any system, on Mac it just make sense for me. (Only less known tools are linked.)

• Snow Leopard (on notebook) or Linux/Solaris (servers)
• Terminal (for SSH, tail -f, scrip/console and others)
• Finder (previews of images and PDFs and drag&drops to Terminal)
• TextMate (with great bundles for Ruby, Rails and Git)
• GitX (mainly for viewing)
• Spark (keyboard shortcuts for new Terminal or Finder window)
• Safari (for dev and normal use + reading RSS feeds)
• Chrome, Opera and Firefox for testing
• Communication
  • Mail.app (Gmail over IMAP)
  • Adium (jabber and icq)
  • Tweetie (great Cocoa twitter app)
  • Skype (mainly voice, there is no need for video)
• iCal.app (for local calendar and remote subscription to Backpack)
• iTunes (music, podcasts - Ruby5, RailsEnvy, TED talks)
• Dockdrop (drag file on dock icon and get it uploaded with URL in your clipboard ready to paste in IM or mail)
• Pixelmator 
• MindNote (for structural ideas)
• VirtualBox (with Windows 7 and various Linux distributions for testing)
• Cyberduck (for FTP needs only, because mostly I am using SCP from shell or git over SSH for file transfers)

Web based SW

I like simplicity of 37signals products (it is inspiration for my own apps).

• Backpack (general purpose tool to keep me organized)
• Campfire (trying Wave from Google)
• Fakturoid (I am user and also developer of this invoicing tool)
• GitHub (open source project hosting with style)
• Writeboard (for preparing blogposts) 
• small self-hosted apps (for private use)

Ideas for improvement

Bigger screen, faster drive (or SSD), more battery life, even more memory, even more connected SW with better import/export abilities.