Ruby

  1. install Ruby using the one click installer
    Note that 1.8.2-15 has a small problem, the Ruby Gems Package Manager shortcut does not work because it is pointing to ruby\bin\gemhelp.cmd which does not exist. To use the Ruby Gems Package Manager open a cmd window and then enter the gems command. Or you can create the gemhelp.cmd file which has only one line in it, cmd /k gem or download it from here.

Ruby on Rails
(see also Getting Started With Rails)

  1. install rails gem (and all its dependencies) 
    gem install rails --remote
  2. when doing an upgrade I sometimes had to force it by doing an install of the version I wanted to upgrade to 
    gem install --remote --version '0.13.1' rails

Salted Hash Login & Authentication Generator
(see also Salted Login Generator Quick Start)

  1. install salted login generator gem 
    gem install --remote salted_login_generator
  2. install localization gem 
    gem install --remote localization_generator
  3. Iconv is a library used for charset conversion and required by the Salted Hash Login Generator. Download this iconv package with simple installation instructions, unzip the package, and run the installer. 
    C:\tmp\iconv>setup
Setup has detected Ruby at c:\devel\ruby
and Windows/System32 at C:\WINDOWS/System32
Install Iconv there? [yN] y
cp iconv.so c:\devel\ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mswin32
cp iconv.dll C:\WINDOWS/System32
cp charset.dll C:\WINDOWS/System32
Installation successful.

    Update, the above iconv package link no longer works. Instead you have to follow the more laborious task of getting iconv.so and installing it in ruby\lib\ruby\1.8\i386-mswin32 and getting iconv.dll and installing it in C:\WINDOWS\System32. More detailed instructions can be found on the iconv in Ruby on Rails page.

RMagick
(see also RMagick Install FAQ)

  1. download latest RMagick Windows gem ZIP archive from http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick/
  2. unzip Windows gem archive
  3. go into unzipped directory and do a local gem install 
    C:\tmp\RMagick-1.9.1-IM-6.2.3-win32>gem install RMagick-win32-1.9.2-mswin32.gem
  4. run post installer 
    C:\tmp\RMagick-1.9.1>postinstall
RMagick 1.9.2 win32 Post Installation (see enclosed README for license information)
detecting available fonts, writing to config/type-windows.xml...ok.
setting MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH to 'c:/devel/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RMagick-win32-1.9.2-mswin32/config'.
setting is only for current user.
Copying 5 dlls to c:/devel/ruby/bin...done.
all done.

MySQL

  1. install MySQL 4.1 (use the Windows Essential installer)
  2. create tables, for example 
    mysql -u fkim -p < zipcodes.sql

phpMyAdmin
Excellent web based MySQL administration tool.

  1. download phpMyAdmin package
  2. unzip package and configure Apache to locate that package
  3. I use phpMyAdmin for administration tasks such as creating users and databases