creating a ruby development environment

I spent several years primarily developing applications using Rails, but more recently I’ve been happily focused on node.js projects. In the past few weeks I started a contract that has me back in Ruby. The MacBook I am using currently has never been used to do any Ruby work, and I made a mess of my .dotfiles. So, I had to start from scratch and get a Ruby environment set up again. Here are some bits I quickly realized I needed.

install some rubies

Managing Ruby versions is a breeze with rbenv, and I like that I can easily understand how it works. $PATH injection is a fine way to deal with this challenge, and I take it a step further by prepending ./bin to my $PATH. Then I can leverage binstubs locally and not have to use the cumbersome bundle exec or ./bin/rails when running scripts.

level up your REPL

You spend a decent amount of time in a Rails console, or IRB. It’s worth configuring some bits to make it more enjoyable. First, just use Pry everywhere.

# ~/.irbrc

begin
  require "rubygems"
  require "pry"
  Pry.start
  exit
rescue LoadError => e
  warn "=> Unable to load pry"
end

Then you can manage how you want all your Ruby REPLs to work in one place, your .pryrc. Here I make sure I always have awesome_print and toss in some examples for how you might extend your environment with methods you find helpful when hacking. I used to require hirb as well, but have not found I miss it enough to add it back (yet).

# ~/.pryrc

# awesome print
begin
  require 'awesome_print'
  AwesomePrint.pry!
rescue LoadError => err
  warn "Couldn't load awesome_print: #{err}"
end

# See https://gist.github.com/807492
class Array
  def self.toy(n=10, &block)
    block_given? ? Array.new(n,&block) : Array.new(n) {|i| i+1}
  end
end

class Hash
  def self.toy(n=10)
    Hash[Array.toy(n).zip(Array.toy(n){|c| (96+(c+1)).chr})]
  end
end

I am still early in my re-setup for active Rails development, but I would expect more Ruby links in the interesting projects sections of upcoming posts. Here are some of the vim plugins I have adopted.

vim-rails

vim-endwise

vim-rubocop

interesting projects

Franchise

Like runkit but targeting SQL results, and very cool that you can share a visualization with a colleague who can then re-connect and explore further.

Probot

I want to start using a some of the example bots immediately, especially the Work In Progress bot.

dedent

This simple function solves a common issue I have creating multi-line strings while in a closure.

r2

This package is not published to npm yet, but I am very excited about its direction. Be sure to read the companion article, Modern Modules, for insight into Mikeal’s intentions.

keystash

I’m not using it for anything, but I love reading the source for clever CLI scripts like this.