The beginings of a collection of information specific to Rails and Mac OS X.

* "Installing Rails under Mac OS X Tiger":http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowtoInstallOnOSXTiger
* "Installing Fast CGI on OS X":http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/FastCGI%20on%20OS%20X
* "Installing Lighttpd on OS X with DarwinPorts":http://blog.unquiet.net/archives/2005/06/17/installing-lighttpd-on-mac-os-x-tiger-with-darwinports/ briefly outlines how to install RoR's favorite web server  
* "A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Installing Ruby, Rails, and FastCGI":http://hivelogic.com/archives/2005/03/18/ruby_install/ is an OSX-specific guide that's clear and well-written.
* Here is another "guide to installing Ruby on Rails on OSX 10.3":http://www.splashed.org/archives/2004/08/23/installing that helped me a lot with setting up. [ The link to this reousrce is currently not functioning. ]
* Installing Ruby from source may be easier than the DarwinPorts intallation. It's just a simple ./configure make install. You may need the ReadlineLibrary though.

h3. Cool Tools

* TextMate is a great text editor with loads of hidden features.
* "CocoaMySQL":http://www.theonline.org/cocoamysql/ is a great graphic interface to your \MySQL databases. The version on \SourceForge won't connect to \MySQL 4.1 servers, so use the version linked here. Or look at [[MySQL Database access problem]]
* "YourSQL":http://yoursql.ludit.it/ is another great MySQL GUI.
* "pgAdmin":http://developer.pgadmin.org/snapshots/osx/ is a very nice graphic interface to use with your PostgreSQL databases. The current version for OS X is a bit rough, but works. Check back often...
* "CyberDuck":http://cyberduck.ch is a cool free FTP/SFTP client, which allows for instant remote editing with TextMate integration.
* "svnX":http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/svnx/ Is a great GUI frontend for Subversion users.
* "SCPlugin":http://scplugin.tigris.org/ is a nice Finder plugin for Subversion users (works with Tiger?).

h3. Virtual Host Setup Issues

The instructions for virtual host set-up (like "Four Days on Rails":http://www.rubyonrails.com/media/text/Rails4Days.pdf) work fine when setting up Rails on Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther.  The only thing missing that is specific to Mac OS X is the fact that, rather than editing /etc/hosts to define the application, you do that in \NetInfo Manager:

# Open /Applications/Utilities/\NetInfo Manager.
# Click the lock and authenticate as an administrator.
# Select "machines".  You should see two entries: "broadcasthost" and "localhost".
# Select "localhost" and click the "Duplicate" button.
# Select "localhost copy" and edit the "name" property, setting the value to the name of your app.  For example, if you want to be able to type "http://todo/" then you should enter the value "todo" in the "name" property.  (Then just make sure that you enter the same name in your Apache config file when creating the <code><VirtualHost></code> directive.)
# Save changes.

From there on, the published instructions worked for me.

Alternatively: Simply edit /etc/hosts as you would on a normal UNIX system and run "lookupd -flushcache".

_Note:  I have yet to successfully set up non-virtual host (aka subdirectory) deployment on Mac OS X.  I hope that ability is coming soon!_

Here is some exact text from <code>httpd.conf</code> that worked for me.

<pre>
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerName todo
        DocumentRoot /Users/username/Sites/todo/public
        <Directory /Users/username/Sites/todo/public/>
                Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride all
                Allow from all
                Order allow,deny
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>    
</pre>

I have a feeling you could do something in the <code>users/username.conf</code> file but this works.  Directory "todo" is not capitalized unlike four days because capitalization errors suck.

h3. Installing Rails via "Gentoo for MacOSX":http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/ (website down right now?)

# Move or remove the bundled Apple Ruby
# (Optional?) emerge readline5: sed s/-dynamiclib/-dynamic// shlib/Makefile 
# 'export USE=readline' or 'setenv USE readline'
# emerge -av ruby rails
# rails ~~/Sites/weblog 
# cd ~~/Sites/weblog/
# ruby scripts/server

_For more information see: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/macos-guide.xml for info on portage, ekeyword, ebuild, and emerge_

*Credits:*

grrrrr (Gentoo for Mac OS X instructions)