Form your deploy.rb file, then deploy as usual, then uncomment it, and deploy again. Simple huh?

First thing you want to do is check which version of postgres you have, with:

Which will give you something like:

So with that info you will know which pg_hba.conf to open, for 9.2 it’s:

In that file, change this line:

To:

Then, at the command type:

Which will let you log in as postgres, then set your new password with:

And then go back to your pg_hba.conf file with:

And change this line:

…back to:

Then:

And that’s it – done!

Get the latest files from vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk, eg:

wget http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/supported/current/vips-7.30.2.tar.gz

Then unpack:

tar -xzvf vips-7.30.2.tar.gz

Then cd into the directory:

cd vips-7.30.2

Then enter ./configure and look for any dependency errors, for me I needed to install glib2, which I did with:

yum install glib2-devel

Then ./configure again, and look out for any warnings. If you see something like:

Simply do: yum install libpng-devel for all those that you need.

Once you are happy to proceed, enter:

make

and

make install

And that’s it!

Enjoy!

Create user

In terminal, enter:

createuser -P user_name

And follow the instructions – they’ll probably be:

Create database

In terminal, enter:

createdb db_name

Grant privileges to user

In terminal:

psql db_name

Then:

grant all privileges on database db_name to user_name;

That’s it!

Postgresapp

The easy option! Simply go to Postgresapp.com download, and double click – that’s it! It also includes PLV8 and PostGIS (see second comment below for details). If you want more info about the project, check out this

Postgres one click installer

Another easy option! This is a one click installer from The EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL Company. It includes PostgreSQL, pgAdmin, PL/Java and the PL/pgSQL debugger plugin. Note that this creates a new postgresql user on your system – you may or may not like that

To install, simply download and double click, from here.

Homebrew

Homebrew – the much loved “missing package manager for OS X”.

In terminal:

brew install postgresql

Then follow the instructions at the end, for me there were:

And these are handy to note

Which one to use?

If you want a quick an easy solution, the Postgresapp seems like a good choice – it just works. If you don’t mind a new user being created on your system them it might be worth trying the one click installer. If you already use Homebrew then that may be your preferred choice.

Personally I would go with the first or last choice as I’m not keen on having additional users on my system.

Install the pg gem

If you want to install the postgres gem, including ARCHFLAGS is recommended:

env ARCHFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ gem install pg

Step one – learn the basics

First I suggest you have a quick read of my last Vim post which acts as a bit of an overview, and why Vim is so good – especially for Rails development.

Then, type vimtutor into your terminal and follow the tutorial – which is fairly short, but easy and fun!

Step two – see it in action

And pick up a thing or two along the way! Derek Wyatt‘s Vim tutorials are pretty awesome. He’s a funny guy who keeps the videos informative and interesting… you never know what he might say or do next – in one for example, he shares that he has no pants on! Crazy nutta! lol.

- Basic Movement – 1

- Basic Movement – 2

- Basic Movement – 3

- Basic Editing – 1

- Basic Editing – 2

- Working with many files – 1

- Working with many files – 2

- Working with many files – 3

There are lots more on his site – but this was enough for me for now. Step 3 is where we start reinforcing some of this stuff.

Step three – do, repeat, reinforce

Firstly, start using Vim as your main editor – that’s when things will start sticking. But also, for the next week or so, read the following once every night (it’s basically some key points from Derek’s screencasts). Repeating will help reinforce and cement the commands into your brain. Mwwhahahaaaaa.

Movement

f/ goes to first character after the f on that line – in this and most of the following cases that’s a forward slash (/)
; repeats the above (to the next forward slash)
t/ goes to just before (till) the character
; repeats the above
F/ goes backwards
T/ goes until backwards
4f/ go to fourth specified character

ct/ change till character
c2tc change until second c (replace 2 with any number)
4f/ go to fourth character (/)

CTRL U move up half a page
CTRL D move down half a page

H go to head (top) of screen (does not change text position on screen)
M go to middle of screen
L go to last (bottom) of screen
48G got to line 48

* changes current word into a search term, hit n for next word.
# same as above, but goes backwards
N in either of the above, changes direction
g* case insensite of *
g# matches part words

/WORD manual search (replace word with what you want to find)
?WORD backwards search

% go to matching bracket

v visual mode
V visual mode – by line

ma mark line
You can then go to wherever you want, use Y to copy the line, and then use ‘a to go back, and then use p to paste.

‘‘ goes back to the line you were on, eg, after a M or 20G.
`` goes back to the exact character you were on.

Editing

I insert at start of line
A append at the end of the line
i insert at position
a append (just after position)
o insert in line below
O insert in line above

x delete at cursor
X delete before cursor (like a backspace)
dd delete line
. repeat (eg dd…..)
dw delete to next word from cursor (includes whitespace up to next word)
diw delete inner word – deletes from start of word to end of word (leaves whitespace)
daw delete a word – deletes from start of word to start of next word (inlcudes whitespace)
de delete to end of word only

cw change word (or to end of word)
c$ change to end of line
cc change entire line
r replace single character
R replace/overwrite from
c2w change two words
3r change 3 chracters
s substitute (delete) character at cursor and go into insert mode
s substitute (delete) entire line and go into insert mode
yy yank (copy) line
Y yank (copy) line
P paste to line below
yw yank word
J join to line below seperated by a space (can be repeated – you can also highlight a number of lines and join them)
6Y yank 6 lines

gUiw make current word uppercase
guiw make current word lowercase

CTRL V block highlight
CTRL Ve block highlight to end of word
From here you can move around(/highligh) as usual, then do something like i to insert some text and then when you click escape it will insert the text to the block you highlighted. You can do any editing, such as cw, x, r etc
gv repeats previous block (handy if you need to re-edit the same block)

CTRL n auto-completion (start typing a word) next completion
CTRL p auto-completion (start typing a word) previous completion

Buffers

Buffers are really cool. Vim keeps track of all the files you’ve opened in a ‘buffer’. So you can easily go back to files as and when you need to – without having to have squillions of tabs or windows open. Being a TextMate tab-a-holic, I love them – as I can see they are going to be much more useful.

:ls lists buffers
:b followed by number or name of file (can use TAB for autocompletion) – to go to that buffer.
:b# flip to last buffer (and again to flip back)
:bd deletes current buffer
:bd 23 delete buffer 23
:bd file-name delete buffer file-name
:bd 23 44 deletes buffers 23 and 44
:bd file-1 file-2 deletes buffers named file-1 and file-2
:22,26 bd deletes buffers in range from 22 to 26

:wall write all
:bn next buffer
:be previous buffer
:bfirst first buffer
:blast last buffer

Windows

Windows are not buffers. So two windows with the same file equals the same buffer. Closing the window does not close the buffer (but closing a buffer can close the window that the buffer is shown in).

:sp split window
:vsp split window vertically
:sp file-name split window with file name.
CTRL W s split window
CTRL W v split window vertically
CTRL W j move to lower window
CTRL W h move to left window
CTRL W c close window
CTRL W K move window above/span/span

Step 4 – you decide

There’s so much more to learn, but it really depends on which aspect of Vim you want to go deeper with. I’ll probably watch the rest of Derek’s videos, because they keep my interest – and he’s kinda mad which makes it all the more compelling.

Here’s a Vim mind map (PDF) that you might want to download and keep as a reference – I found it on Joe Martinez‘s site.

Well, good luck! I hope you’ll enjoy Vim as much as I think I will, and if I come across more resources that I think are worth sharing, I’ll be sure to add them here./span etc
span class=”nc”

Basic install

First up, install MacVim (or Vim for your platform)

Then install the Janus: Vim Distribution which is the defacto Rails Vim distro.

Adding the CodeSchool theme

Although Janus comes with plenty of themes, I prefer my old TextMate theme (which I created to mimic the CodeSchool theme used in their Rails Best Practises course) …it’s just so easy on the eye, and going by my stats, quite popular.

You can see what a full page looks like by clicking here (Note: I have since added a slight background to the line numbers as I feel that makes it easier to see indentation levels).

Download the theme from here, unzip it and place the codeschool.vim file in ~/.vim/colors

Then, open ~/.gvimrc.afterand inside that paste (and save):

To add some breathing space at the top, in terminal type:
defaults write org.vim.MacVim MMTextInsetTop ’5′

Ok that’s the theme sorted. You might have noticed I moved the NERDTree to the right hand side, which is where I prefer it – if you prefer the left omit that line.

Some basics

First, pick up the basics by going to your command line and typing vimtutor (and enter). It’s a really good, albeit short, introduction. Then (for those of us coming from tab-based editors) here’s a few tips you might find handy:

CTRL Ww moves you from window to window (i.e nerdtree to window and vice versa)
CTRL WT moves current window into a tab

t (While in nerdtree) opens the file in a tab.

gt Goes to next tab.

gT Goes to previous tab.

\n Toggles the NerdTree on or off.

Command T Similar to TextMate’s find in project. Try to navigate by directory rather than file name. While there CTRL T opens in a tab, or Escape closes it.

df [character] deletes to character, eg df_ will delete to the next underscore

I just want to add that although the above covers tabs, tab’s are one thing you will probably use quite differently in Vim… Vim has a really awesome package of buffers + tabs + split windows – which will probably mean a different, more flexible and pleasant workflow I might do a blog post about it later (stay tuned!) but for now just be prepared to move away from endless tabs – if that’s what you were used to before.

Here are are the erb tags:

CTRL S = <%= %> erb tags
CTRL S - <% -%> erb tags
CTRL S # <%# %> erb tags

Some killer commands

Here is the first batch of killer commands I have found – do you know more? Please let me know and I’ll add them! Most of these come courtesy of Tim Pope and his rails.vim plug-in (which is installed with Janus).

:Rmodel dog you can replace ‘model’ with controller or view (or helper, test, etc) and then enter the name of the controller or view you want. Pretty awesome huh?

:Rmodel will take you to the associated Model depending on which file you are in. Also works with: :Rcontroller :Renvironment :Rfixtures :Rhelper :Rjavascript :Rlayout :Rlib :Rmailer :Rmigration :Rmodel :Robserver :Rtask :Rview :Rspec

:Rfind file-name will take you to the file directly.

:Rgenerate (options) same as rails g in terminal.

:A goes to the alternate file (eg the associated test file)
:AS same as above, but in split
:AV same as above, but in vertical split

:R goes to the related file, so if the cursor is on the ‘show’ method of a controller – it will take you to the show view.
:RS same as above, but in split
:RV same as above, but in vertical split

gf – go to related file depending on where your cursor is (see :R above)
CTRL Wgf same as above but in a new tab
CTRL Wf same as above but in new split window.

:Rake task-name runs the rake task

There are lots more – check out the Rails.vim link below for them all.

:NERDTreeFind will show you the location of the file you are in, inside NERDTree (and open NERDTree if it is not open). Thanks to Rafał for that tip!

While in NERDTree, press m for menu – then you can add/delete/rename etc Thanks to Les for that tip!

Command-Shift-F find in project (though you need ‘Ack’ for this to work – on Mac, install with brew install ack) Thanks to Chris for this tip!

:sp splits your screen (can be used multiple times)

:vsp splits your screen as above – but vertically.

Be sure to check out the ‘Learning Vim’ link below – there, I post tips on how you can master the basics of Vim, easily and quickly.

Further reading

- Daniel Fishcher’s TextMate to Vim post

- Thoughtbot’s Intro to Rails Vim video

- Rails.vim awesome command list

- Learning Vim (by me)

Well that’s it for now, I hope this post has shown you not only how to set up Vim, but a few of the basic commands as well as some of the killer features that makes Vim so great for Rails development. I hope you’ll have as much fun with it as I think I will!

Add this to your deploy.rb file:

That will create the symbolic link. So all files uploaded to current/public/uploads actually get stored (and called from) the shared/uploads directory.

Then run deploy:setup to set it up:

You have to make sure these directories are not tracked by Git. Which is easy enough you just add them to the .gitignore file:

However, if Git is already tracking (or has previously tracked) the directory, you will need to remove it, with:

The –cached option doesn’t touch your working directory (so public/uploads will remain there).

That’s it!

A monitor with a tiny dot pitch and large enough resolution (and size) and an inbuilt scaler. What this basically means is a monitor with a very high resolution, but where the text is pretty small when set to the native resolution. For example a 30″ Dell (native screen res of 2560 x 1600)

What you do

Simply set the scale options on the monitor to ‘aspect’, and set your computer to run it at 1920 x 1200.

What you get

A super smooth, super slick display. Which you can position at a comfortable viewing distance (like the back of your desk, not the middle where it’s right up to your nose!).

Git Basics

Working with branches/versions

To get rid of a branch altogether

To apply changes to the master branch

Just note that changes are not saved to your repo until you add them (such as with git add .) and then commit them.

I’ve had all this in my notes for a while – I can’t remember where they came from now but think it was TheRailsTutorial.com