How to set up Rails dev environment on MacBook Pro running Windows 7?

Question

Work has issued me a MacBook Pro, but I am primarily an ASP.NET (C#) developer, so I spend most of my time in Windows 7 running on VMWare Fusion.

I have been asked to begin working on Ruby on Rails projects (which I am looking forward to). I find that I prefer the Windows 7 OS as I tend to be more productive in it over OSX, so I would like to setup my Rails dev environment on Windows 7.

Based on other user's experiences, I would like to know your recommendations how how to setup my Windows 7 environment to develop Ruby on Rails with Postgres as the database.

While doing some initial research I did find this post on using Vagrant with VirtualBox which sounded interesting, but I am wondering if I could just do something similar with my existing OSX install.

Also, I am not completely opposed to running my Rails dev environment in OSX, so I am willing to hear arguments in favor of this approach. Do Windows and Rails/Postgres work well together as a dev environment?

Thanks for any helpful feedback you can provide.

Answer 1

I'll try to persuade you to use OS X.

Windows ruby development brings a vast amount of problems with gems. Especially with native extensions.

The second argument for OS X, is that it is UNIX based system, which is much closer to production environment. Nobody deploys to windows.

Most of ruby tutorials and manuals require unix based system.

Just give OS X a chance, and you will be much productive, spending time on you applications business logic, and not asking other questions, related with windows&ruby problems.

Don't use vagrant inside windows at vmware fusion. It seems really strange :)

The most common ruby development style - is simple text editor and terminal. Thats all, you don't need windows for that.