Start doing Rails 3 and JRails 3 development on OS X 10.6

Question

I have OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) that is already coming loaded with Rails 2.
Rails now is at version 3 and I'm about to have Rails and JRails (JRuby on Rails) development.

I don't want to mess things, what should I do? How to upgrade to Rails 3? Should I use RVM (Ruby Version Manager)? Should I install JRuby via Homebrew?

Answer 1

I'd definitely go for RVM, it's the most painless way to set up different Ruby/Rails combinations on the same host. Especially with a comparatively young project like JRuby it was and sometime still is to effortlessly track HEAD next to the stable release.

Edit according to comment: RVM has excellent documentation, I'm not gonna repeat that. Here are some pointers:

• https://rvm.io/rvm/install/
• https://rvm.io/rvm/upgrading/
• https://rvm.io/rubies/installing/
• https://rvm.io/gemsets/basics/
• https://rvm.io/workflow/rvmrc/

Answer 2

RVM is the right way to do that. I can't live without it. You can also use a separate package manager like homebrew or macports to install libraries and dependencies for gems which need to be compiled.