Getting Started with Ruby-on-Rails

I've never used Ruby or Ruby-on-Rails
but now that JavaOne 2007 is over, I
decided to spend some time understanding the hype behind it. I'll publish this
as a multi-series entry sharing my experience.

Ruby-on-Rails main download page
requires you to download Ruby,
RubyGems and then install
Rails. And even then it's missing Apache
and MySQL. For a first timer, this is way
too many packages to download and install. Anyway there is
InstantRails
containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all pre-configured and ready to run
but this is hidden down in the page. The first approach of downloading each
component individually and then installing/configuring them does not seem to
match the promise of "optimized for programmer happiness".

After spending sometime with piecemeal approach (Ruby
1.8.5-24,

RubyGems 0.9.3, Installing Rails) and then finding out (Ruby-on-Rails
revisited) to install MySQL separately (and who knows other components), I'm
planning to use
InstantRails.

Technorati:
RubyOnRails RoR
Ruby