Development Environment Setup: OS X

This is a rough guide to getting a development environment set up on OSX. This guide has been tested over the years from Mavericks v10.9 up to Catalina v10.15.

Step 1. XCode / Command Line Tools

XCode is Apple's suite of OS X and iOS development tools, and provides a whole IDE geared for that purpose. My understanding is that the only component of XCode that is particularly pertinent to rails development on OSX is the GCC compiler system. It used to be the case that one had to download and install the entire XCode suite in order to get the useful bits, but now Apple provides a condensed 'useful bits' package in the form of Command Line Tools (CLT).

First, check to see if gcc is available on your system already:

$ gcc --version

If it is not, you should be prompted to install Command Line Tools. If you are not prompted to install it, you can do this:

$ xcode-select --install

Run through the prompts to download and install it.

When that process has finished, you should get a sensible answer out of:

$ gcc --version

The output for this is should be something like:

Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 8.1.0 (clang-802.0.42)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin16.6.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

Now we can move on to installing the interesting things!

Step 2. Homebrew

Homebrew is the 'missing package manager' for OS X. Some people don't like it because it encourages a lack of understanding about where and how packages are installed/configured, which can lead to difficulties in debugging if something goes wrong. That is a valid concern, but I tend to like it because it is quick and easy to use, and I generally have greater confidence in other people's ability to put together a Homebrew package in an intelligent way, than I do in my own ability to hack together a solution.

At the time of writing, the process to install Homebrew is listed on the Homebrew Homepage. If what I have below doesn't work, it may be worth checking back there to see if the procedure has changed. Anyway, this worked for me (note that you will be prompted for your password):

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

When that is done, run brew doctor to check the status of your homebrew install:

$ brew doctor

If successful, you should get: Your system is ready to brew, YAY!

Step 3. Git

Git is the version control system used to manage all the independent code contributions made by awesome people like you! So before installing anything with Homebrew you should update your package lists with:

$ brew update

Now we can install Git with:

$ brew install git

And check that everything is still ok with:

$ brew doctor

If you see a warning like "/usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin" check the troubleshooting section on the bottom of this page.

When you check which version of git you are using:

$ which git

You should see: /usr/local/bin/git

If that has all worked, you can now set up your git credentials with:

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
$ git config --global user.email "email@address.here"

Step 4 (Optional). Disabling documentation installation

If you don't ever use docs for gems (I don't), you can disable installation of documentation with:

$ echo "gem: --no-document" >> ~/.gemrc

Step 5. RVM

Ruby Version Manager is a very useful tool which facilitates the management of ruby configuration on a per-project basis, allowing any number of setups using different versions of ruby, rails or gems to be used on the same machine relatively seamlessly.

For any other OSX version, the process to download and install RVM uses gpg to verify the integrity of the RVM installer. It might be worth checking the RVM homepage to ensure this is still the correct process to follow. You can install gpg using Homebrew:

$ brew install gpg
$ brew doctor

Download the public key for the RVM installer (again, probably worth checking the RVM homepage for up to date instructions):

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3 7D2BAF1CF37B13E2069D6956105BD0E739499BDB

In OSX El Capitan use this command instead: $ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

If this step fails see the gpg troubleshooting section at the bottom of this page.

To install RVM and the latest version of ruby and rails, which is probably a good idea, use the following command. NOTE: RVM can globally install the latest versions of ruby and rails for you here, see the RVM install docs for more information. NOTE: the leading backslash is used to directly call the curl binary and ignore any alias for 'curl' you may have set up.

$ \curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --autolibs=enable

When that is done you should be able to restart your terminal OR load the rvm binary into your shell with:

$ source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm

Then run:

$ type rvm | head -1

Which should give you rvm is a function if everything went well.

Step 6. Installing the required version of ruby

OFN will require a specific version of Ruby. The ruby version required is stored in a file in the root folder of the project repository called .ruby-version. You can check the version and install it into RVM like this:

$ rvm install 2.7.3

If you are still getting openssl issues here despite installing rvm with autolibs enabled, see the troubleshooting section below.

Step 7. Installing the required version of Node

It's recommended to use Nodenv to manage the Node version, based on the .node-version file.

Use the installation instructions in the readme, ensuring you follow all steps.

Once installed, you can install the current version:

$ nodenv install

Step 8. Verify environment

Run each of the following just to check that you get sensible numbers out of each of them:

$ git --version
$ rvm -v
$ ruby -v
$ node -v

Step 9: Installing And Setting up Postgres

We now have ruby and rails installed, but we still require postgres, which can be installed with Homebrew:

$ brew update
$ brew install postgres

You should now be able to get launchd to start the postgres server (and restart as login) with:

$ brew services start postgresql

Postgres can be stopped with: $ brew services stop postgresql but don't do this now.

If, for some reason, this doesn't work for you, see how to manage postgres with lunchy at the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this page.

Step 10. Adding OFN users (roles) to postgres

Postgres should have been set up with your current user as the default postgres admin user, meaning that you should be able to set up new postgres users directly in the command prompt. YOU MAY NEED TO RESTART TERMINAL HERE. You are good to go if:

$ which createuser

gives you something like: /usr/local/bin/createuser

We need to add the database user(s) defined in the config/database.yml file in the OFN project repository. At the time of writing the user was ofn and the password was f00d. You can add a postgres user using:

$ createuser --superuser --pwprompt ofn

Which will create a user named ofn and then prompt the user for the password when run. Make sure you enter the password exactly as it appears in the database.yml file. The reason that the --superuser is required is that we are using foreign keys which are registered in postgres as triggers, which in turn can only be added and removed by superusers.

Next add the development and test databases (open_food_network_dev and open_food_network_test at the time of writing):

$ createdb open_food_network_dev --owner=ofn
$ createdb open_food_network_test --owner=ofn

Step 11. Redis

Now, we need to install Redis for Sidekiq to store background jobs. You can do so with:

$ brew install redis

Like we did with postgres, you should be able to start the redis server with launchd:

$ brew services start redis

Step 12. Other things you should install

Headless Chrome: make sure Google Chrome is installed so that you can run feature tests.

ImageMagick: used to create and manipulate images

$ brew update
$ brew install imagemagick

Karma: a test runner for pure javascript (which we use to test our AngularJS)

Karma Guide

Also see optional extras below.

Step 13. Done

Now you are ready to follow the GETTING STARTED guide

Troubleshooting

Git

If you get an error (as I did) that says: Warning: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin, it means that you probably have installed the full XCode suite and the default version of Git that ships with XCode is stilling in /usr/bin, meaning our new version of Git that we are installing with Homebrew will not be used because as the error tells us: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin in the PATH. The following command will fix that by adding a line to ~/.bash_profile.

$ echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Refresh your .bash_profile by entering:

$ . ~/.bash_profile

gpg setup

If you get gpg: keyserver receive failed: No keyserver available, try a different server. eg:

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3 7D2BAF1CF37B13E2069D6956105BD0E739499BDB

If you still see an error like gpg: keyserver receive failed: No data, wait, it may be due to server unavailability, and try again a few minutes later.

If instead you see a message like gpg: keyserver receive failed: No route to host then chances are that gpg decides to use IPv6 while it should use IPv4. You can check out https://github.com/rvm/rvm/issues/4215#issuecomment-435221616 for a solution.

Update bundler version

The version of bundler that rvm installed for me was quite old, so when I ran bundle -v, I got: 1.7.6. I updated the version of bundler using:

$ gem update bundler

And now, bundle -v gives me: Bundler version 1.17.2. 👍

You may need to run gem install bundler to install the bundler in the first place.

You should now be able to install the required gems with:

$ bundle install

Once all gems have been installed, check that rails is ready to go:

$ bundle exec rails -v

./script/setup doesn't work

If script/setup doesn't work for you, you can run the commands manually.

Make sure you have a valid application.yml file (you should edit locale, currency, etc this as required):

$ cp config/application.yml.example config/application.yml

Install the required gems using:

$ bundle install

Set up the database(s):

$ bundle exec rake db:setup db:test:prepare

You will probably want to insert some seed data into the database so that the server has all the things it needs to start up:

$ bundle exec rake db:seed

And load some sample data for your environment:

$ bundle exec rake ofn:sample_data

libv8 and mini_racer issues

If you run into an issue with the libv8 gem try:

$ gem install libv8 -v 3.16.14.11 -- --with-system-v8

Problems with mini_racer installation (usually on ruby upgrade or osx update) can be solved by following this guide: https://blog.driftingruby.com/updated-to-mojave/ or this stack overflow post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34617452/how-to-update-xcode-from-command-line If this doesnt work you can try to download Command Line Tools from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ (search for "Command Line Tools") and install them manually.

Database sorting issues

Oddly, it seems that Postgres sorting on macOS behaves differently, so you may get specs that don't work in your local environment. (ref)

Optional extras

Manage postgres with Lunchy

You can manage postgres with Lunchy:

$ gem install lunchy

When that is done, make sure you have a LaunchAgents folder:

$ mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents

And then populate it with symbolic links back to the postgres config file(s) installed by homebrew:

$ ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/postgresql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

You should now be able to start the postgres server with:

$ lunchy start postgres

Postgres can be stopped with: $ lunchy stop postgres but don't do this now.