I am coming from a .NET background and beginning my journey into the Mac OSX\Ruby\Rails environment.
A lot of the resources I have found such as this one have between 5-10 steps for setting up a Ruby\Rails environment.
My question is, what are the bare minimum requirements for setting up a working Ruby\Rails environment?
Can I use RailsInstaller and be done?
Should I install all of the tools that the above link suggests (XQuartz, Homebrew, RVM, etc) even though I don't really know what they do?
Right now I am not being paid to do this, but am also curious what professional Rails developers do when setting up an environment.
I am also more concerned about the why as in why I shouldn't use RailsInstaller or why I should install RVM.
Best Answer
Installing various bits and pieces and different tools and getting them working together actually turns out to be fairly constant in the Ruby on Rails world.
This was a change for me as the previous frameworks I'd used changed much slower and had far less choice (and changing) of which tools to use.
Rails installer is great and I would use it.
Xcode is pretty essential on a mac for installing stuff, make sure to avoid the older Macports.
Homebrew is also a really good idea - it will help you install stuff and diagnose any issues. It's really more of a help than a hindrence. Plus is easy to install.
RVM will help you with your Ruby install and version changes. Both Ruby and Rails both have versions changes every few weeks, not every few months/years as was common with older languages and frameworks.
Part of the trick of being a full-stack rails developer is being comfortable with exactly this kinda stuff. Rails gives you a ton of benefits by using convention over configuration and DRY principles, so you write less code. The 'cost' you pay is needing to be good at the infrastructure stuff to install components (such as gems) and systems and not be re-inventing the wheel by writing them yourself.