Install Ruby and Rails on a Mac

This is a step-by-step guide for installing Ruby and Rails on a MAC. Then it shows you how to create a first Rails project. Finally, it shows how to run the Rails project.

Installation steps

Step 1 — Install Homebrew (brew.sh)

Homebrew is a free open-source software package manager mainly used to easily help on the software installation on macOS and Linux operating systems.

To install the Homebrew, we need to open a terminal window and execute the following command.

/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Note: For more information about Homebrew there is the official website: https://brew.sh/ .

Homebrew homepage

Step 2 — Install chruby

Sometimes, when working with many Ruby projects, we may need to have different versions of Ruby (maybe because a specific component was developed only for a specific version of Ruby, or maybe we want to run the newest version, etc,). In order to manage the used version, there is a version manager called chruby.

To install the chruby, we need to open a terminal window and execute the following command.

brew install chruby

At the end of the installation add the following command to the terminal configuration file

a) If the terminal is bash, execute the following command.

sudo nano /etc/bashrc

And then, paste the line

source /usr/local/opt/chruby/share/chruby/chruby.sh

a) If you use zsh, execute the following command.

sudo nano ~/.zshrc

And then paste the line

source /usr/local/opt/chruby/share/chruby/chruby.sh

For these changes to take effect it is necessary to open a new terminal window.

Note: For more information on how to install chruby there is the Homebrew website with a dedicated page: https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/chruby

chruby webpage on Hombrew

Step 3 — Install ruby-install

In a terminal window and execute the following command.

brew install ruby-install

At the end of the installation run the following command to verify that it has been installed.

ruby-install –version

Note: For more information about ruby-install, access the website https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/installation/

Ruby install documentation website

Step 4 — Run brew update

In a terminal window and execute the following command.

brew update

Step 5 — Install Openssl

In a terminal window and run the following command.

brew install openssl

Step 6 — Add the path to openssl

a) If you use bash, execute the following command in a terminal window, replacing USERNAME with the name of the system user.

echo ‘export PATH=”/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/bin:$PATH”’ >> /Users/USERNAME/.bash_profile

b) If you use zsh, execute the following command in a terminal window, replacing USERNAME with the name of the system user.

echo ‘export PATH=”/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/bin:$PATH”’ >> /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile

Note: For more information about installing openssl, you can access the site https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/openssl@1.1

openssl webpage

Step 7 — Identify openssl for system compilers

In order to make the compilers be able to identify the openssl in the system, we will need to do the following configuration:

a) If you use bash, execute the following command in a terminal window to edit the .bash_profile file

nano /Users/USERNAME/.bash_profile

Add the following lines to the file

export LDFLAGS=”-L/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/lib”
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/include

b) If you use zsh, execute the following command in a terminal window to edit .zprofile file

nano /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile

Add the following lines to the file

export LDFLAGS=”-L/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/lib”
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/include

For these settings to take effect it is necessary to open a new terminal window.

Step 8 — Get the latest ruby ​​version

In a terminal window, execute the following command.

ruby-install –latest

The most recent ruby ​​version will be shown

Step 9 — Install the latest version of ruby

In this case, version 2.7.2 will be installed.

In a terminal window, execute the following command.

ruby-install ruby 2.7.2 — — with-openssl-dir=/usr/local/opt/openssl

For these settings to take effect it is necessary to open a new terminal window.

Step 10 — Switch ruby ​​versions

In this step, the ruby ​​versions switch to the latest version (in this case, 2.7.2)

a) If you use bash, execute the following command in a terminal window to edit the .bash_profile file

nano /Users/USERNAME/.bash_profile

Add the command to the file

chruby 2.7.2

b) If you use zsh, execute the following command in a terminal window to edit .zprofile file

nano /Users/USERNAME/.zprofile

Add the command to the file

chruby 2.7.2

Step 11 — Install GEM Rails

This GEM corresponds to the Ruby on Rails framework, a web framework (full-stack).

In a terminal window run the following command:

gem install rails

Note: To find out more information about GEM rails, we can access the official website: https://rubygems.org/gems/rails/

Gem rails official site

Step 12 — Install nvm

Since there are many versions of NodeJs and we may have the need to change between NodeJS versions (maybe because a component works on a version, but not on another, or we want to have the most recent version of NodeJs, etc.) there is a Node Version Management tool (nvm) that will make NodeJs version management more easy. In order to have nvm installed we need to open a terminal window and execute the following command.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.37.2/install.sh | bash

a) If you use bash, execute the following command in a terminal window, replacing USERNAME with the name of the system user.

nano /Users/USERNAME /.bash_profile

Add the following command to the file

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

b) If you use zsh, execute the following command in a terminal window, replacing USERNAME with the name of the system user.

nano /Users/USERNAME /.zprofile

Add the following command to the file

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

For these settings to take effect it is necessary to open a new terminal window.

Step 13 — Install NodeJs

In a terminal window, execute the following command.

nvm install node

Step 14 — Install Yarn

In a terminal window, execute the following command.

npm install -g yarn

How to create your first Ruby on Rails project?

In this example we will be using the nano text editor to write the code on the files. We could use other text editors or IDEs, like Emacs or Visual Studio Code.

Step 1 — Create the project

On a terminal window, we should open the folder where we want to create the project and execute the following command, taking in attention that project-name is the name we want to give to the project:

rails new project-name

The command will create a folder named project-name with the essential files to put a site to run.

Step 2 — Acces the project

Run the following command to enter the project folder

cd project-name

Step 3 — Run the project

Run the following command

rails s

This will start a process for running the site.

Step 4 — Open the project site on a browser

On a webbrowser window, access the following url: http://localhost:3000

It will show a web site similar to the following.

Default landing page

Usually, to have webpages using Ruby on rails we should know that they use the MVC pattern. Also, to access the webpage, we must create a route.

Step 5 — Create our first route

a) Create a controller

On a terminal window, inside the project folder, run the following command.

nano ./app/controllers/home_controller.rb

Put the following code on the file.

class HomeController < ApplicationController
def index
end
end

b) Create a view

On a terminal window, inside the project folder, run the following command.

nano views/index.html.erb

Put the following code on the file.

<h1>
Hello World
</h1>
<hr />
<p>It’s <%= Time.now.strftime(“%H:%M”) %> on <%= Time.now.strftime(“%d/%m/%Y”) %>. Lets start coding! </p>

c) Create a route

On a terminal window, inside the project folder, run the following command.

nano /config/routes.rb

Put the following code on the file.

Rails.application.routes.draw do
# For details on the DSL available within this file, see https://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
root ‘home#index’
end

Step 6 — Refresh the webpage and check the update

Your page should be similar to the following one, a simple page with the current time and date, inviting you to code.

Now we can continue creating new controllers, views, routes, etc.

So, what have we learned?

These are just the first small steps to start on the Ruby on Rails world. I advise you do them and continue creating more controllers, views and routes.

I also share with you some useful useful websites:

Getting Started with Rails: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html

- QuickStart: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/

- Ruby on Rails official site: https://rubyonrails.org/

- Ruby on Rails (wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails