Useful Software for Ruby on Rails Development on Mac OS X
12.11.2014
This is not a guide on how to set up a Ruby on Rails development environment, since I think there are better guides out there for that. Rather, this is a list of things I personally install before I begin any coding begins.
- Homebrew – The “missing” package manager for OS X. This command line tool makes it ultra easy to download and install packages.
- Git – Though Mac OS X comes with a pre-installed version of Git, it is likely out of date. Can be updated with Homebrew.
- Postgresql – Database system. Can be installed with Homebrew.
- rbenv – A ruby version manager. Can be installed with Homebrew.
- Zsh – Since I no longer like to spend too much time customizing my .bashrc, Zsh comes with a much better set of defaults including git aliases and color scheme. Can be installed with Homebrew.
- Sublime Text 3 – My preferred text editor. Simple and clean UI with powerful editing capabilities.
- iTerm2 – Improved terminal with better split screen support and other features.
- Dash – A documentation set manager so you can access API documentation offline for pretty much any language, framework or library. The global search is super useful.
- Heroku Toolbelt – Heroku’s command line tool for deploying and managing apps.
- Cyberduck – An FTP program. Also supports connection to S3 buckets.
- Firefox – Great browser with a bunch of useful add-ons and a cool “Responsive Design Mode”
- Chrome – Also a great browser with a bunch of useful add-ons.
- MAMP – Useful for editing this site theme where I write about Ruby on Rails stuff
- Xcode – Useful for building iOS clients that talk to Ruby on Rails servers
- MindNode Pro – This is a very useful mind mapping tool that can be bought from the app store. Very useful for mapping out those big ideas.
Anyways, these are the tools that I use to do most of my programming these days. There are a lot of different setups out there, but this is mine and I’m pretty happy with it so far.