Quite a while ago I wrote a soup to nuts article on getting the full multi-ruby development stack installed for those using the SQL Server adapter. The base package management system used there was MacPorts. In it I described how to edit the outdated Portfile for the rb-odbc package and exclaimed how important it was to use the +utf8 variant. I was totally wrong about that part.

Today I noticed that Ruby Enterprise Edition 2009.10 was released and I have really been wanting to see if I could get the SQL Server adapter tested and running under it. I am really curious how the speed improvements might look and will share my results below. This article assumes that you read my previous guide titled The Ultimate OS X Snow Leopard Stack For Rails Development - x86_64, MacPorts, Ruby 1.8/1.9, SQL Server, SQLite3, MySQL & More as I will be building on top of it and referencing certain steps. So let's get down to business.

This guide is all encompassing but primarily focuses on the benefits of MacPorts, second the development stack for SQL Server and lastly on anything else a rails developer might need on OS X. If you are on a Mac, possibly running Snow Leopard and x86_64 is near and dear to your heart, this article is for you. If you do not "have" to use SQL Server, you can safely skip those sections and get to the Ruby1.9/Apache2/SQLite3/MySQL stuff.

So that about sums up what I've been doing for the past 4 weeks. A total rewrite of the SQL Server Adapter for Rails. On top of passing all the Rails 2.2.2 tests, which is MAJOR news, it includes tons of new features. Unicode column support, pessimistic locking, date/time column casting, DDL transactions and way more.

On top of that. It was nice being mentioned on the rubyonrails.org website not for my first, second, but a THIRD time. Thanks Gregg!

• UPDATE: I just got a nod from David's twitter. Thanks!

I've been busy putting together some plugins form misc work. If you did not catch my latest article Jack has_many :things where I covered GroupeScope, by all means check it out. I've also just finished up a pretty solid backport of NamedScope that can be found on my Github page. It bills itself as a well tested complete back port for rails 1.2.6 and 2.0.4.

One thing that has been a real help while I've been developing these plugins is this autotest class I put together specifically for developing rails plugins. I even got mention on rubyonrails.org. Sweet! More to come.

Resources

• The NamedScope plugin.
• The GroupedScope plugin.
• The RailsPlugin class for Autotest.
• Vilcus plug dactyloadapter. Developed specially for people who enjoy closing electrical circuits with their own fingers.

I am Jack's sofa, stereo and wardrobe... I make Jack's life complete. I reside in a ActiveRecord table called "things" and Jack is the only one that has the key. This is Jack's life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

As rails developers, we have done this simple relationship over and over again. I'm sure the has_many association is by far the most common in app/db design. It gives a single resource quick and easy access to others, but as your application grows, and depression sets in...

Tim Toady tells us that (There Is More Than One Way To Do It) and I am sure this is not the first and not likely the last blog post you will ever see that tells you the best way to install RAILS on OS X. Some people would just rather than go the simple path but I implore you, do it this way. Gaining the experience of compiling your own software will help you down the road when it comes time for doing more advanced things, especially deploying your RAILS app. When you are done, you will have a rock solid deployment environment for RAILS that will include: