O’Reilly’s OnLamp has posted the second installment of their how-to guide on using Google Gears. (I wrote about Part I previously.)
In the second article, Jack Herrington walks us through how to use Google Gears’ SQLite database for offline data entry and how to sync the offline data with a PHP web application when connectivity becomes available again.
Capistrano 2.0 has been released.
Capistrano is a tool for automating tasks on remote servers, especially those running Ruby on Rails applications. It lets system administrators execute commands and roll back changes in parallel across multiple machines.
There’s now a one-click installer for the Mac that installs Ruby, Rubygems, Mongrel, SQLite and a few other bits. The current packages seem to be for 10.3 and 10.4 with more coming soon.
From their webpage:
This package is the most simple way to equip your Macintosh Apple OSX System with Ruby - similar to the Windows Ruby One-Click Installer. It replaces the broken Readline library, updates to a current version of SQLite3 and prepares your OSX for Rails, which needs at least Ruby 1.8.4 to run. The current Ruby Version is 1.8.6 (1.8.5 is recommended for Rails) and Rubygems 0.9.4.
This package’s intention is to remain small while being a Universal Binary that serves everything to deploy Ruby Applications on OSX Machines - Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger or Leopard. You don’t need to compile anything and you don’t need Apple’s Developer Tools (xcode) installed.
The Ruby One-Click Installer for OSX is adding the installed files to /usr/local, not replacing Apple’s original Ruby. That means you can easily uninstall this package or switch to Apple’s Ruby again.
Note that if you want the ri and rdoc files you’ll need to download the “Documentation Package” separately.
I haven’t tried it yet, but the next time I’m installing from scratch I will. If you try it and have good luck, let me know in the comments.
Rick Olson posted an announcement on Riding Rails about the release of his new project Warehouse. It’s a web-based browser for your Subversion repositories, written in Ruby on Rails. It make it easy to browse directories, code and the activity log from any browser. Warehouse is $30 to purchase and download.
The June Rails Hackfest, produced by Working With Rails, is complete and the winners have been announced. Congratulations to Josh Peek who won by a sizeable margin.
The July Rails Hackfest is already underway, with more prizes. Can Josh Peek be unseated as the champion? (He’s at #11 as I write this…)
Apparently the blogosphere was holding it’s breath for the iPhone. Today, suddenly, there are dozens more posts than usual. Plus, I was on the road last week, so there’s a lot to catch up on. Here are some highlights.
There’s been a lot of buzz about Google Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using Ajax and SQLite. Basically, it allows applications to download data while they have a connection to a remote server, store the data locally in a database, and then retrieve and use the data even when the web application is offline. Imagine searching Google Maps while in your car or reading RSS feeds on a plane. Even better, imagine submitting data to a web application that gets uploaded once you have a connection again—a lot like having emails waiting in your outbox.
Rather than just write “Hey, Google Gears was announced!” like everyone else, I decided to hold off until someone wrote something more in depth. Well, now O’Reilly’s OnLamp has. Jack Herrington has written an article titled The Power of Google Gears (Part 1). It’s not just about Gears, he actually walks you through a sample implementation step-by-step. He uses PHP, PEAR, and Prototype, but he explains it well enough that it should be easy to do in any language or framework.
But, at least for now, you’ll need an internet connection to read the article.
In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last six months—the iPhone comes out this Friday and people are already lining up to buy one. Whether you get one or not, as a developer, you are probably wondering how your existing applications will perform and are eager to discover any iPhone details worth remembering during future development.
O’Reilly’s blog has the details on iPhoneDevCamp. Like BarCamp it will be a free, non-commercial event, organized by volunteers. There will be collaborative development projects as well as opportunities to optimize and test existing web applications on the iPhone. You won’t need an iPhone to attend, but if you are already in line, you’ll definitely want to come show off yours.
If you use (or want to learn to use) the console while programming Ruby on Rails. Then Railscasts #48 is for you! Ryan Bates demonstrates all sorts of useful techniques for getting the most out of the Rails console. He has also provided a list of resources that are worth the trip if you want to learn even more.
Whether it’s Agile Software Development or Test Driven Development, every year new systems of code and project management spring up like tullips. Each one comes with loyal devotees who swear by it and denounce all the other heathen religions.
Scott Berkun feels that none of the current models accurately describe the way software development actually happens. Sure, you may be aspiring to adhere to the tenants of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), but isn’t Asshole Driven Development (ADD) a more accurate description? Or maybe Cover Your Ass Engineering (CYAE)?
Check out Scott’s full list and be sure to read the user submitted additions.
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Kevin Skoglund is a web developer and instructor specializing in Ruby on Rails, PHP, SQL, HTML, and CSS.
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