The third generation of Rails has finally been released. More than 1,600 contributors were involved in its creation.

There have been a large number of changes with the release of Ruby on Rails 3.0.

David August notes that there were thousands of commits, but highlighted some of the major changes.

Here is a look at some of the new creations as well as important changes.

The New Stuff

• Active Record Query Engine – it is use the Arel query engine so that scopes and queries will be more composable and more consistent.
• Router for Action Controller – Rails 2 saw a switch to the REST-based approach and Rails 3 has redone the syntax to minimize the noise and increase flexibility within the REST style.
• Action Mailer – With Rails 3, the Action Mailer has been made all controller to improve the functionality as well as the overall feel.

Big Changes

• Managing Dependencies – All of the dependencies from Rails 3 will be managed by Bundler. The intention of this is to allow you to specify libraries, plugins, and framework.
• Default XSS Protection
• Encoding Issues – Rails 3 has combined all of the tools necessary to eliminate encoding errors that lead to corrupted data being copied and pasted by Microsoft Word.
• No Direct References to Active Record – Most of the commonly requested Active Record components have been integrated into the Active Model framework. You can now use an ORM (API Compliant) for related features.
• New Plugin APIs – Railties have been rewritten in order to accommodate a new plugin API.
• Internals Have Been Rewritten – In regards to Action Pack and Railties, the internals have been completely rewritten. There are now modules as opposed to the Action Controller.
• New Documentation – It should be no surprise that with the longer than expected development cycle there is also a bit of new documentation with more to be released soon.

There are a large number of other changes, both big and small, that have been made to Ruby on Rails 3. For more detailed information, make sure to check out all of the new documentation.

Obviously I’m not the only user, the following open source software is used by some of the biggest research organizations and companies world wild. For example, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses track software or open source project such as lighttpd / phpbb use redmine software to keep track of their projects.

You use the following top 10 software for personal or business use. Keep track of all your projects in one place and finish them successfully on time.

#1: Codendi

Codendi is an open-source collaborative development platform offered by Xerox. From only one interface, it gathers, all the needed tools for software development teams: management and versioning of code, bugs, requirements, documents, reporting, tests etc. It is mainly used for managing software project processes.

• Download Codendi

#2: Redmine

Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database. It includes calendar and gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines.

• Download redmine

#3: ProjectPier

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

• Download ProjectPier

#4: Trac

Trac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. Trac allows hyperlinking information between a computer bug database, revision control and wiki content. It also serves as a web interface to a version control system like Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs.

• Download Trac

#5: Project HQ

Project HQ is a collaborative open source project management tool, similar to Basecamp and activeCollab. Project HQ is built on open source technologies like Python, Pylons and SQLAlchemy and is fully database independent. Project HQ uses a structured workflow to assist you in managing your projects.

• Download Project HQ

#6: Collabtive

Collabtive is a web-based project management software that is being published as Open Source software. The project was started in November 2007. It strives to provide an Open Source alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab.

• Download Collabtive

#7: eGroupWare

eGroupWare is a free open source groupware software intended for businesses from small to enterprises. Its primary functions allow users to manage contacts, appointments, projects and to-do lists.

It is used either via its native web-interface, making access platform-independent, or by using different supported groupware clients, such as Kontact, Novell Evolution, or Microsoft Outlook. It can also be used by mobile phone or PDA via SyncML.

• Download eGroupWare

#8: KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

• Download KForge

#9: OpenGoo

It is a complete online solution focused on improving productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams. OpenGoo main features include document management, contact management, e-mail, project management, and time management. Text documents and presentations can be created and edited online. Files can be uploaded, organized and shared, independent of file formats.

• Download OpenGoo

#10: ClockingIT

ClockingIT is a free Project Management solution, which helps your team stay focused and on top of things.

• Download ClockingIT

Other FOSS Project Management Software Projects

1. JotBug
2. Bugzilla (only bug tracking)
3. OpenProj (desktop app – replacement for MS-project)

How do you manage your IT / software and other projects? Are you using a better option? Let us know in the comments.

$ sudo gem install rvm  

$ rvm-install

Finally put this lines in your .bash_profile or .bashrc:

  if [[ -s $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ]] ; then
          source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm
  fi

Restart your terminal, Rvm should be working by now.

2 – Installing ruby inside your rvm

$ rvm install 1.8.7

Will install ruby 1.8.7

$ rvm install ruby-head

Will install ruby 1.9.2 or newer.

3 – Setting up rvm to use your specific ruby version

$ rvm use 1.8.7

To use just this time.

$ rvm use 1.8.7 --default

To use always this version.

If you are using any other ruby replace the “1.8.7” for your version.

4 – Installing rails 2 and rails 3 RC inside different gemsets

You can separate your rails versions inside gemsets:

Rails 2:

Create the gemset:

$ rvm gemset create rails2

Setting up rvm to use always this gemset:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails2 --default

Installing rails 2:

$ gem install rails

Rails 3:

Create the gemset:

$ rvm gemset create rails3

Setting up rvm to use always this gemset:

$rvm use 1.8.7@rails3 --default

Installing rails 3:

$ gem install rails --pre

5 – Switching between different rails versions

Switching to rails 2:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails2
$ rails -v
Rails 2.3.5

Switching to rails 3:

$ rvm use 1.8.7@rails3
$ rails -v
Rails 3.0.0.rc

Ubuntu has a managed ruby package that serves perfectly as the basis for a Ruby on Rails installation. Open a console and install it with the following command.

sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential

I’ve previously had issues with the rubygems Debian package and would normally advocate installing the package directly from RubyForge.

cd ~
mkdir gems
cd gems
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/70696/rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
tar -xf rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.7
sudo ruby setup.rb

The ruby setup script doesn’t automatically place a link to the gems application in your /usr/bin folder so add it now.

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem

Update your ruby environment. If you’ve downloaded the latest version of rubygems, you’ll be told that everything is already up-to-date.

sudo gem update system
gem -v

With your ruby environment ready, install rails.

sudo gem install rails

You’re finally at the point where you can create rails projects, just use the following command.

rails test_project

I prefer to use something a bit more friendly than vi as a development environment for Rails. Download and install the latest copy of Netbeans from netbeans.org.

wget http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.9/final/bundles/netbeans-6.9-ml-linux.sh
chmod +x netbeans-6.9-ml-linux.sh
./netbeans-6.9-ml-linux.sh

However I thought of making a list of websites which help do so

So here is the bunchedin : http://www.bunchedin.com/vuIMCc

wget ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick.tar.gz

Next configure and compile ImageMagick:

tar xvfz ImageMagick.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick-6.6.3
./configure
make

If ImageMagick configured and compiled without complaint, you are ready to install it on your system. Administrator privileges are required to install. To install, type

sudo make install

Finally, verify the ImageMagick install worked properly, type

/usr/local/bin/convert logo: logo.gif

For a more comprehensive test, run the ImageMagick validation suite. Ghosts cript is a prerequisite, otherwise the EPS, PS, and PDF tests will fail.

make check

Reference : http://www.bunchedin.com/aOqNOv

Check the comments .

However got stuck at the very first step after bootstrapping a fresh application .

Error :

After scratching head for long and loosing 20 hairs atleast drilled down to source of error and monkey patched the error .

Moreover after a little digging, it was evident that the ‘relative_path_from’ method in ‘/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/pathname.rb’ file had the problem. The problem was also described as a ticket at http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1366 and the excerpt of the issue is shown below:

Monkey Patch :

I added the capitalize! keyword at the end of the two lines so that both the paths are in uppercase, so that later in the code ( ) shown below does not barf and give us the error we got shown in the first error of the post.

Overriding original :

It is very likely that at some point you will need to send out emails from your application. Don’t cry. Gmail can do this for you. Rails 2.3.2 makes it easier than ever with the addition of ‘enable_starttls_auto’. Put the following code in production.rb, development.rb or environment.rb and you ’should’ be able to send out emails:

If you are one of the lucky ones this will actually work. It didn’t work for me but since I still needed to get email working here’s what I did:

First be sure to activate the email account that you are using. To do that you only need to login. Google will walk you through entering a captcha etc.

You might get this error:
Net::SMTPAuthenticationError: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first.

If you do then check your Ruby version. Ruby 1.8.7 has this built in but Ruby 1.8.6 does not.

The next best thing is to get action_mailer_tls. Most of the links you will find in forum and blog posts are broken. The code is on github and neatly packaged as a gem: http://github.com/openrain/action_mailer_tls/tree/master. Follow the directions to install and configure the plugin there and you should be able to send email.

Here’s a couple of handy conversations for reference:

http://www.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=28480

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/184137

The router has been completely re-written and borrows heavily from the Merb router, but has a more developed DSL.

Regular Routes

Regular routes are more concise, but I’m not sure how I feel about the “controller#action” syntax yet…

Named Routes

Very similar to regular routes, just with an extra :as variable at the end.

Restful Routes

I think restful routes get the biggest improvement. The new syntax is MUCH easier to read than in Rails 2.

ActiveRecord and ActiveRelation

This is probably my favorite addition to Rails. The new ActiveRecord syntax is very similar to Doctrine (which we use with symfony). Instead of passing options as a hash to your find() method, they’ve created a bunch of new methods you can chain together.

The best part is that any of the query methods just return a relation instead of running the sql query. That way, you can chain more query methods on the relation later. The actual query doesn’t run until you try to access the object(s) (such as with an iterator). This makes fragment caching a lot easier, because you can keep your query call in your action. Even if the cache is hit, it will only create a relation and not actually query the database. You can also force the query to be run at any time by calling all(), first(), or last() on the relation.