What you need to develop Rails applications while traveling
I’m currently on a three month backpacking trip through Europe and while I’m here I am working on a couple new rails sites. It’s incredible to program on off days and look up and see the ocean and the beach in the distance. While traveling internet can be hard to find or expensive which is annoying if you do need the internet. I know, I know “rails apps are developed locally”. This post is about the resources you often use mostly ruby doc’s and the Rails docs along with a couple other items, how to make them or where to find them.
Ruby documentation
There are two downloads available on the ruby doc site. One is the “ruby doc bundle” which includes quite a few tutorials for learning ruby. The other download is just the documentation for the ruby library. If you are going on a long trip and are looking to learn ruby the first one might be the best choice.
Plugins
Download the most recent version of your favorite plugins, they come in handy when you are on a plane and could really use paperclip. If you don’t download the newer ones, check some of your older projects you probably have a copy of one of them laying around. Some really common plugins just to remind you.
Gems
If you’ve installed any gems without their documentation you should reinstall the gem. Just do a gem install this_gem then it will install the docs and the latest version for you. To view documentation for your gems in a web browser you can boot up a local gem server.
gem server
You can also generate the html files for your gems if you need as well by following the instructions in the ruby gems manual
Git repository browsing
With git you can boot up an instaweb server so that you can view your repository through a web browser. Not as wonderful as github obviously but it’s a better visual look at your repository. See the git instaweb documentation for more information and how to get it up and running. Usually I start up instaweb with the following command:
git instaweb -d webrick
Books
If you have the digital version of any books make sure you have them on your computer since you might need them for reference at some point. A good place to buy books is the pragmatic programmer or obviously amazon.com under rails
Other notes
- If you are working on an application that requires third party integration such as google maps, twitter, flickr save those for when you have an internet connection
- Make sure you have ImageMagick installed, you’ll probably use it at some point
