New to Ruby, need install advice

[Keleth]

I'm hoping I can get some advice on Ruby installs, as I sit a bit confused at this point.

I've decided to learn Ruby to increased my job potential/value, and because I've heard Ruby/Python (both of which I intend to learn) can do a lot of fun stuff that languages like PHP cannot. To that extent, I decided to start with Ruby, and am trying to install Ruby locally.

I already have WAMP installed, to run my PHP/MySQL, and I'm trying to figure out how to install Ruby to work with my WAMP.

So first... is this a situation of making Ruby work "with" WAMP? Or is it just concurrent? I presume that Ruby requires a software like Apache, so it should make sense to install Ruby to work with my WAMP server, correct?

Next, if the first step is correct, does anyone have any experience installing Ruby with WAMP? I've tried googling for results, but I've only come across articles that are years old, using softwares that the sites they're hosted on openly state are outdated. The closest I've come to "modern" (or not mattering to time) is from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...ide-wampserver but it requires "Mongrel", which I don't quite understand. It also seems to indicate I need to create a new port forwarding for every Ruby app I write? Is this a limitation of this install method, or of Ruby? It seems inefficient when you consider in comparison you can run any PHP app straight from a folder.

And any advice to getting started with Ruby/Rails and any book recommendations would of course, not go unappreciated. Compared to starting PHP, C++, or Java, I feel lost getting started with Ruby, and I can't tell if its because I'm over thinking it, or I've missed something entirely.

[kaizenfury7]

I would recommend just using the windows installer found on the official Rails web site:
http://rubyonrails.org/download

You may want to just start off using the Rails defaults. Rails comes with with the WEBrick web server, so you can just use that. No configuration needed. You can also just install SQLite and use that as the database. It's definitely not as sophisticated as MySQL, but if you just want to learn Ruby on Rails, SQLite is good enough for that purpose.

You can download the precompiled binary here:
http://www.sqlite.org/download.html

I then use the Firefox extension SQLite Manager to manage the database (it's as simple as just opening up the development.sqlite DB file)

I tried to work with Ruby on Rails on Windows for about 3 years, but I ended up using VirtualBox to set up an Ubuntu installation for all my Rails work, and then bought a MacBook Air. The reason is that there's not as much documentation when something isn't working on Windows. In addition, gems sometimes have dependencies for libraries or software that just aren't available for Windows.

Hope this helps a bit.

[LMHmedchem]

I use cygwin for all of these windows applications. In cygwin, I have ruby, python, perl, sed, grep, awk, and all the other unix goodies. You also are working out of bash/mintty for a shell, which totally blows away doing things in the windows shell. If you read my other thread, cygwin is not problem free, but there is a good support group. You also learn linux while using it, which is an added bonus. If you read my other thread, there are instructions for getting ruby going with SQLite3. Cygwin also has mySQL as well as SQLite and some other database utilities, as well as the full set of gnu programming compilers and tons of other stuff.

LMHmedchem