HOWTOs for Ruby on Rails and JavaScript

sstephenson/execjs - GitHub

ExecJS lets you run JavaScript code from Ruby. It automatically picks the best runtime available to evaluate your JavaScript program, then returns the result to you as a Ruby object.

github.com

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We forked craken

We forked craken today and fixed one of the issues we had with new (>0.8.7) rake versions.

The craken:install rake task raised a "can't convert Hash into String" error e.g. while deploying with Capistrano.

https://github.com/makandra/craken

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A few git tips you didn't know about

Random list of useful git commands for advanced users. I found some of them useful.

mislav.uniqpath.com

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Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. Unfortunately, setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft's VirtualPC can be extremely difficult. These scripts aim to facilitate that process using VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.

github.com

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mojombo/grit - GitHub

Grit gives you object oriented read/write access to Git repositories via Ruby.

github.com

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Fix Rubygems warning: Gem.source_index is deprecated, use Specification

After updating Rubygems you see a wall of deprecation warnings like this:

NOTE: Gem::SourceIndex#add_spec is deprecated, use Specification.add_spec. It will be removed on or after 2011-11-01.
Gem::SourceIndex#add_spec called from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:197.

NOTE: Gem::SourceIndex#add_specs is deprecated with no replacement. It will be removed on or after 2011-11-01.
Gem::SourceIndex#spec_dirs= called from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/bundler-1.0.14/lib/bundler/rubygems_integration.rb:175

...

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Best GitHub feature

When browsing a repository, pressing "t" allows you to quickly search for file names. Very awesome!

Go here to try it out.

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Solarized color scheme for Rubymine

If you want to use the (badly implemented!) solarized color scheme in your Rubymine IDE:

Clone the IntelliJ IDEA port:

git clone https://github.com/jkaving/intellij-colors-solarized.git
Import the settings in Rubymine by chosing the above directory File -> Import Settings
Change the color scheme in the settings (Ctrl-Alt-S) in Editor -> Colors & Fonts

Note that selecting a color scheme will also reset your previous editor font choice. You might want to change the font to [Envy Code R](http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/2...

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Shell script to generate a Git commit with Pivotal Tracker story ID and title

We usually generate our commit messages from Pivotal Tracker IDs and titles, like
[#15775609] Index view for conflicts

The geordi command commit automates this. (See: Pretty Commit messages via geordi).

Just run geordi commit and it will connect to PT and let you select from a list of all started and finishes stories. Then it runs git commit with the generated message (i.e. all staged changes will be commited).

When running for the first time, Geordi will request your PT...

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Dotfiles: Keep your linux configuration on github

Some folks have started to keep their linux configuration in a git repository called "dotfiles". This sounds like a good idea.

here are mine

The idea is to keep all config files in a ~/.dotfiles git repository, and symlink these files to all relevant places. This happens automatically with a rake task.

github.com

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Running the Awesome window manager within Gnome

Note: Consider using MATE instead of Gnome 3 on newer system

Awesome is a very good tiling window manager that provides neat features like automatic layouting of windows, good multi-display support with per display workspaces and more. Unfortunately, it is only a window manager, and lacks a lot of Gnome's conveniences like the network manager, application menus, automatic updates etc.

Fortunately, Gnome allows you to selectively replace only the win...

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Installing Rails on a fresh system

Install Ruby from the Ubuntu repository: sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev \
ruby is the meta package. If you want to explicitly install 1.8 or 1.9, install ruby1.8 or ruby1.9 instead (the same applies for ruby-dev).
Do not install RubyGems from the repository but install the version from the webpage instead.
Get Bundler: sudo gem install bundler

Rails and other gems for a project should now be installed via bundle install from the...

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console-for opens a Rails console remotely on a Capistrano deployment target

We're adding a script console-for to open a remote Rails console with one command. Also have a look at shell-for, which this script is relying on.

Run it from any project directory like this, passing a Capistrano multistage deployment target:

console-for staging

This script is part of our geordi gem on github.

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How to fix: undefined method `specifications' (caused by RubyGems 1.8)

Sometimes, when running a rake task, RubyGems 1.8.5 raises an error:

rake aborted!
undefined method `specifications' for "/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8":String

This has been fixed since May 31 but is still not available as a new RubyGems version.

Either wait for a new version to eventually come out, downgrade to some really old version (1.6.2 works for some) or apply the fix manually:

Find your rubygems.rb -- mine was located at `/usr/local/lib/sit...

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RubyMine crashes Ubuntu 11.04 window decorator on exit

My RubyMine (and it seems like many other Java GUI applications) crashes the Compiz window decorator almost every time on exit. This also seems to happen for the Unity decorator.

Update: The commited fix from below seems to have made it into the stable Ubuntu repository.

Easy mode

You can restore window decorations by executing this command:

gtk-window-decorator --replace &

This is only a temporary fix.

Hard mode

Also, there is a committed fix that is n...

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How to use Git on Windows with PuTTY

Get "PuTTY Link" and "Pageant" (an SSH key agent) from the PuTTY download page.
Run pageant.exe, find its icon inside your system tray and add your SSH key.
Open up a cmd and put the full path to PuTTY's plink.exe into the GIT_SSH environment variable, e.g.:
```
set GIT_SSH=D:\PuTTY\plink.exe
```

You can then use Git like you would on any sane operating system. Just go ahead and git clone, git pull, etc.

Also, you may want to add the environment vari...

richfrog.curzons.net

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Order in which RSpec processes .rb files

Because your examples should not change global state, you should not need to care about the order in which RSpec processes your .rb files. However, in some cases you might want to know.

RSpec 3

Runs .rb files in alphabetical order of their file paths by default (or when you specify --order defined).
You run t...

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Git: How to automatically stage deleted files for commit

When you do a git add . and have deleted files, git won’t stage them to be commited (as deleted). Use

git add -u

From the git documentation: `-u`, `--update <filepattern>`

Only match against already tracked files in the index rather than the working tree. That means that it will never stage new files, but that it will stage modified new contents of tracked files and that it will remove files from the index if the corresponding files in the working tree have been removed.
If no is given, defa...

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Execution of shell code in Ruby scripts

Deprecated ways to execute shell code in Ruby

This is just a reference for legacy code. For new code, always use capture3.

%x{ } or backticks – quick and easy

Returns the standard output of running the given command in a subshell. This is an alias for `...`, and you can use string interpolation.

Example:

name = 'ls'
result = `which #{name}`

It does not escape anything you inject in the string, so be aware of possible security vulnerabilities...

blog.jayfields.com

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Script to create and copy a production dump to your project root

Soon after having written our shell-for script, we wanted to easily get dumps of our productions machines, too. This is how we do it:

dump-for staging [-s]

It will copy the dump to your project's tmp directory and name it according to the capistrano stage you're calling for, here: staging.dump. When you pass the optional -s option, the dump will automatically been sourced into your local development database.

This script ...

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Releasing geordi

After having written useful scripts into makandra notes for a long time, we’ve now tied them into a powerful new gem: geordi.

It gives you the power to

get a dump from your production database with dump-for production
install your local gems to the production machine with install-gems-remotely
execute rake tasks to several environments at the same time with power-rake db:migrate
and much more

Check it out from github.

github.com

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Updating a gem created with Bundler

Since May 2011 we are cutting new gems using Bundler, which is less painful than cutting gems using Jeweler. You know a gem was cut using Bundler if you see the word Bundler in a gem project's Rakefile.

This is how to update a gem that was cut using Bundler:

Say git pull or check out a repository from Github like git clone git@github.com:makandra/geordi.git
Update the gem version in `lib/project...

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Script to open an SSH shell to a Capistrano deployment target

We regularly need to connect to the server in order to e.g. access the production console. Guessing the Capistrano deploy user and then again guessing the right directory on the server is awkward, so we wrote a script that parses config/deploy and gives you the handy command shell-for.

Run it from any project directory like this, passing a Capistrano multistage deployment target:

shell-for staging

Now it also supports commands to be remotely executed before loading the bash. Use --no-bash to only execute the command and load no ba...

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Bash script to run specs and features

Run rspec-and-cucumber from any project directory to run both RSpec and Cucumber. If available, rspec_spinner or cucumber_spinner are used.

Note that features are not run when specs fail.\
If you prefer to run them in parallel or run features regardless of the spec results, please adjust it for yourself accordingly.

This script is part of our geordi gem on github.

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Easy mode

Hard mode

RSpec 3

From the git documentation: -u, --update <filepattern>

Deprecated ways to execute shell code in Ruby

%x{ } or backticks – quick and easy

From the git documentation: `-u`, `--update <filepattern>`