First Release Candidate for Ruby 2.0 Available in BitNami

With the release of Ruby 2.0.0 planned for February 24th, you may want to test out Ruby 2.0.0rc1, the first release candidate for this version, and test if your projects are ready for it. In order to simplify this task for you, we have just released BitNami Ruby Stack with ruby 2.0.0rc1. It is completely self-contained and will not conflict with your current development environment. You can download it, give it a try and safely remove it when you are done.

This version includes new features and improvements but it includes a few compatibility issues as well. You can find a list of changes in the Ruby repository.

If you are not familiar with BitNami Ruby Stack, it is a free package that simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications. This version includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2.23, MySQL 5.5.29, Ruby 2.0.0rc1 and Rails 3.2.11. It also includes RVM 1.13.6, NGinx 1.2.4, Passenger 3.0.17, SQLite 3.7.10, Git 1.7.11.3 and all required dependencies.

BitNami RubyStack can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers (for Linux and Mac OS X), virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images as always and we are happy to add Windows Azure as an additional Cloud platform. If you are not familitar with this platform yet, check our Getting Started guide to learn how easy it is to run BitNami applications through the Windows Azure management console.

Updated BitNami Spree Stack Released

We have just released an updated version of the BitNami Spree stack, which now bundles Spree 1.2.0. Spree is a powerful and flexible e-commerce platform for Ruby on Rails framework. As with all BitNami Stacks, it can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers, virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images. The BitNami Spree stack includes ready-to-run versions of Apache, MySQL and Ruby On Rails.

This latest release includes Spree 1.2.0, which  features custom look, product and order management, hundreds of extensions and awesome themes. With Spree, you can create an attractive and useful interface for your customers to purchase goods and services through your website.

Spree products page

On the back-end, it provides a powerful interface for managing orders, products and configurations easily.

Spree administration dashboard

BitNami Trac v1.0 released, Managing Users now easier

We have just released an updated BitNami Stack for Trac 1.0, the latest stable version of the popular bug tracking system. In the previous release candidate, we added Git support and now we also ship the popular Account Manager plugin.

If you are not familiar with Trac, it is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. The project’s mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way.

The recently added Account Manager plugin offers features for managing user accounts easily:

• Enable authentication through a number of built-in authentication resources and some more by 3rd party extensions
• Allow users to register new accounts
• Allow existing users to change their passwords

Account Manager plugin in action

As usual, Trac is now available in the form of ready-to-run installers, virtual machine images (VMs) and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for the Amazon Cloud.

New How-to Guide: Upgrading from an Older BitNami AMI to a New One

At BitNami, we strive to always provide you with the most up-to-date versions of all of the applications and supporting software that we package. In connection with this, we are constantly publishing updated BitNami Stacks. In fact, just this month-to-date, we have already published over 20 BitNami Stack updates!

One of the many benefits of running BitNami in the cloud is that you can easily clone servers to apply updates before promoting an updated server into production. This is made even easier with BitNami Cloud Hosting, our platform for deploying and managing web apps in the cloud. We have put together a how-to guide to walk you through the process of upgrading your BitNami instance from one AMI version to another, which will work for both AMIs launched directly through Amazon as well as those launched with BitNami Cloud Hosting. In addition to this general guide, we have also put together tutorials for upgrading servers running BitNami Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal on the Amazon cloud.

Enjoy!

How to Deploy BitNami Stacks on EC2

Presentation about deploying BitNami AMIs to Amazon EC2, by Andy McCaskey from SDR News.