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However, if you have a computer running an older version of Windows, that option isn’t available to you.
Ruby on rails editor windows how to#
It’s called the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and we’ll cover how to get a working Ruby installation with the approach below.
Ruby on rails editor windows install#
This also means that you can use Linux package managers to install the traditional Ruby environment. This means you can install and run Linux applications. That’s right, Windows 10 allows you to install a Linux “subsystem” on the same computer. They’ve also embraced open source by bringing Linux to Windows! The tech giant now has over 2,400 repositories on GitHub, and the description on their GitHub profile says “open-source, from Microsoft with love.” Their open-source projects include the popular Visual Studio Code programming text editor.
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One of the most surprising and pleasant developments in the software world in recent years has been Microsoft warming up to open source. It’s always best to keep the development environment as close as possible to the production environment so that you don’t get any surprises when your code goes live. For example, if you want to write a Ruby on Rails web application, you’ll likely be deploying it onto a Linux web server. Plus, you may find that less common libraries don’t even offer a Windows version.Īnd if you’re planning on deploying your code, you should think about what that platform will be. When seeking help for a problem you run into, you’ll likely find fewer search results for Windows. There’s always been an effort to make it work on Windows as well, but the Unix-like environments got priority.įor many years, trying to develop Ruby code on a Windows computer meant dealing with issues that someone using a Mac or Linux computer wouldn’t face.
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It was developed on Unix-based computers, so making the language work there came first. Ruby is an open-source language written by volunteers. This means that they can use the same compiler, shared library system, and other tools to build the Ruby interpreter and Ruby libraries, which are called “RubyGems.” Those two operating systems have similar “toolchains” because both are based on Unix. Ruby’s difficulties on Windows stem from the fact that it’s very different, under the covers, from both Linux and macOS.
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