Ruby on Rails - Do I have to install rails everytime

Question

I have finished the Michael Hartl RoR Tutorial, it took me around 8 months due to my day job getting in the way so I forget some of the early on stuff. I'm setting out to now make something of my own when I realized I was not sure how to proceed... Here's my question.

Do I need to install rails every time I start a new app? Is it correct that I think of every app as a website?

To expand, I have the following directory structure ~/Rails_Projects/app1 ~/Rails_Projects/app2 Do I need to install rails into every app directory? Or should I install rails only once in the 'Rails_Projects' directory and just use the 'rails new' command for new apps.

Answer 1

It is correct to think of every rails application as a web site, the rails software itself can then be considered either:

• As a server component - install a version of rails to your ruby gem directory accessible for the whole server using gem install rails or bundle install or
• As a plugin for that application/website - install the appropriate version to the applications folder using bundle install --deployment

More details about bundler

In either case you would define which version of rails your application/website uses in its gemfile

When using multiple rails versions it is sometimes necessary to use multiple ruby versions too. For multiple versions of ruby (versions like 1.9.2 or 2.0.0, not instances of the same version) you can use a tool such as ruby version manager (or pik on windows) to allow them to coexist on one server.