Ruby 2.5 now available on Bitnami

We are happy to announce the release of Ruby 2.5. The Bitnami Ruby Stack provides a complete, ready-to-run development environment for Ruby on Rails. This release comes with lots of new features and improvements.

Here are some highlights:

• rescue/else/ensure are allowed inside do/end blocks.
• Add yield_self to yield given block in its context. Unlike tap, it returns the result of the block. 
• Support branch coverage and method coverage measurement. The branch coverage indicates which branches are executed and which are not.
• Struct.new can create classes that accept keyword arguments.
• Top-level constant look-up is no longer available.
• About 5-10% performance improvement by removing all trace instructions from overall bytecode (instruction sequences).
• Block passing by a block parameter is about 3 times faster than Ruby 2.4.
• Mutex is rewritten to be smaller and faster.
• ERB now generates code from a template twice as fast as Ruby 2.4.

You can read about all the new features and improvements in the official release notes.

Do you want to try these new features? Deploy the Bitnami Ruby Stack in just one click. To get started, you can choose to use our free all-in-one native installers, virtual machines, or launch it in the cloud.

Launch Ruby 2.5 Now

The easiest way to test Ruby 2.0

Yesterday, the first stable version of Ruby 2.0 series was released. The date for this major release was carefully chosen by the Ruby development team to be Ruby's birthday, now turning 20 years old! We wanted to join this celebration by doing what we do best. Our present: providing you with the the easiest way to test Ruby 2.0 :)

Bitnami Rubystack provides free, all-in-one installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon machine images that provide a self-contained Ruby environment. It includes the Ruby runtime (of course!), Rails and a bunch of other commonly used third-party libraries and servers such as Rails, RVM, Imagemagick, MySQL, etc.  The packages will not interfere with your existing development environment and you can easily add/remove them at will. In fact, one of the preferred use cases for our stacks is to quickly test new versions of popular open source apps

Give it a try!

Updated BitNami Redmine stacks (Ruby 1.9, Passenger 4)

We are happy to announce that BitNami Redmine, BitNami RubyStack and other Ruby-based stacks have been updated to include Ruby 1.9 and Passenger 4 beta with one goal in mind: improving performance. There are benchmarks that prove Ruby 1.9 is almost 2x faster than 1.8 version, and it feels even faster in the real world. 

The following are several BitNami applications that have been re-released with Ruby 1.9 support:

- Redmine, project management tool.

- Spree, an e-commerce platform.

- Tracks, a web-based application to help you implement the GTD methodology.

- Radiant, a Ruby On Rails CMS. We have upgraded it to 1.1.0 version.

- In addition to that, all of the BitNami PHP-based modules like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, SugarCRM and others will run well on top of RubyStack.

         

The default configuration for production environments for Linux and OS X is now Apache running with the Passenger module. However, if you prefer to use Nginx with Passenger, BitNami RubyStack ships the Nginx server and the Passenger extension already compiled and ready-to-use! Please see below for how easy it is to enable Nginx server with Passenger.

$ cd /opt/bitnami (or your installation directory)

$ ./ctlscript.sh stop apache

Edit the "nginx/conf/nginx.conf" and add the public path to your application. For example, Redmine application:

 server {

    listen 80; (or a different port)

    root /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs/public;

    passenger_enabled on;

    rails_env production;

    passenger_base_uri /redmine;

 }

Disable Apache server and enable Nginx.

$ mv apache2/scripts/ctl.sh apache2/scripts/ctl.sh.disable

$ mv nginx/scripts/ctl.sh.disable nginx/scripts/ctl.sh

$ ./ctlscript.sh start nginx

On Windows, all BitNami Ruby-based stacks ship DevKit, a development tool kit for adding gems that require C/C++ extensions easily. Now it is even easier to customize your applications or extend their functionality adding plugins.

Test drive Ruby 2.0 today with BitNami Rubystack

The next major Ruby release (2.0.0) is currently planned for February. A preliminary version (Ruby 2.0.0-preview1) has been made available by the Ruby development team in order to give developers a chance to test their projects with this version and see if they are "Ruby 2.0 ready". At BitNami, one of our goals is to simplify the testing of the latest versions of open source web applications and language runtimes. We are happy to announce that we have just released an updated BitNami Rubystack with Ruby 2.0.0. It is completly self-contained and it will not conflict with your current development environment. You can download it, give a try and safely remove it when you are done.

In the ruby-dev mailing list developers are encouraged to check the compatibility of their Ruby 1.9 programs with 2.0.0 and report if they run into problems:

We have taken considerable care in source-level compatibility with 1.9. We believe all "normal" programs will work without modification. So, please give it a try, and report if your program does not work. 

Yusuke Endoh

If you are not familiar already with BitNami RubyStack, it is a free packaging offering that simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications. This version includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2.23, MySQL 5.5.28, Ruby 2.0.0-preview1 and Rails 3.2.8. It also includes RVM 1.11.3.5, NGinx 1.3.4, Passenger 3.0.17, SQLite 3.7.10, Git 1.7.11.3 and all required dependencies. It can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers (for Linux and Mac OS X), virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images.

RubyStack now with Rails 3.2.7 and Varnish

We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami RubyStack that includes the latest version of Rails, 3.2.7.

BitNami RubyStack simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications for development, testing and production. It can be deployed using a native installer for Windows, OS X or Linux, as a virtual machine or in the Amazon cloud. Thanks to the Amazon Free Tier, you can try BitNami RubyStack in the cloud for free during one year.

In addition to Rails we have upgraded the following components:

- Ruby 1.9.3-p194
- Git 1.7.11.3
- Subversion 1.7.5
- NGinx 1.3.4
- Passenger 3.0.14
- PHP 5.3.15

It also ships the following components that you can use in your applications:

- RVM 1.13.6
- DevKit tdm-32-4.5.2 for Windows
- MySQL 5.5.21
- Apache 2.2.22
- ImageMagick 6.7.5

In this release we include an optional new component: Varnish Cache server 3.0.1 for Linux and OS X. It is a web application accelerator that can be deployed in front of any HTTP server and can significantly improve performance. You can learn more in the BitNami Varnish quick start guide.

It takes just minutes to deploy BitNami RubyStack and we are always looking for ways we can improve it. So go ahead, give it a try and let us know what you think!

BitNami module for Redmine 2.0 already available for new Rubystack

Last week we released the new BitNami Redmine 2.0 Stack with several configuration improvements:

• On Linux and OS X, the default configuration now uses Passenger (a.k.a mod_rails) instead of Mongrel Cluster servers. This configuration improves the Redmine application performance for these platforms.
• On Windows, the BitNami Redmine Stack uses Thin servers instead of Mongrel to deploy the Redmine application. Different benchmark tests show that Thin performance is also better than Mongrel.

Now, we are happy to announce two new versions of BitNami RubyStack:

- Version 2.3.14-2: Which supports the new Redmine module version in addition to other  PHP  BitNami modules like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, SugarCRM, etc. These modules are installed on top of this RubyStack and they share the same Apache server and the MySQL database.

- Version 3.2.5-0: Which ships the latest version of Rails and Ruby 1.9.

Both RubyStack versions include RVM 1.13.6 for OS X and Linux. On Windows they ship the DevKit to install gems that require to be compiled for this system easily.

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

New RubyStack upgraded to Rails 3.2.0

We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami RubyStack that includes the latest version of Rails, 3.2.0.

BitNami RubyStack simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications for development, testing and production. It can be deployed using a native installer, as a virtual machine or in the Amazon cloud.

This Stack ships, among others, the following components, providing a complete Rails environment out of the box:

• Ruby 1.9.3-p0
• Rails 3.2.0
• SQLite 3.7.3
• Apache 2.2.21
• PHP 5.3.9
• MySQL 5.5.16 for Linux and OS X
• phpMyAdmin 3.4.9
• NGinx 1.0.10
• Git 1.7.8
• Subversion 1.7.1
• Phusion Passenger 3.0.11
• Memcached 1.4.5

Don't forge to check our updated quick start guide in PDF where you can learn how to create your own Ruby On Rails project on top of this BitNami Stack. Enjoy!

New BitNami RubyStack with Rails 3.1.3 released

We are happy to announce two new releases of BitNami RubyStack.The new releases contain different versions of Ruby and Rails, so you can choose the BitNami Stack that best meets your development needs. Both BitNami RubyStack versions allow you to setup instant Ruby On Rails development and testing environments locally in your desktop/laptop for Windows, Linux, OS X or in the Cloud.

Both versions ship the latest versions of the most popular components: Apache 2.2.21, MySQL 5.5.16, NGinx 1.0.10, Subversion 1.7.1, Git 1.7.8, PHP 5.3.8 among other components. The primary difference between the two versions are the Ruby and Rails versions included:

RubyStack 3.1.3 version ships Ruby 1.9.3-p0 and Rails 3.1.3.

RubyStack 2.3.14 version includes Ruby 1.8.7-p334 and Rails 2.3.14.

We have also released an up-to-date quick start guide in PDF where you can learn how to create your own Ruby On Rails project on top of this BitNami Stack.

New RubyStack support Rails 3.1

If you are a Rails developer, you are aware that Rails 3.1 was recently released . We have now updated our BitNami RubyStack Development stack to include support for it.

This release includes the following updated components:

• Ruby 1.9.2-p290
• Rails 3.1  (of course!)
• PHP 5.3.8
• Apache 2.2.19
• Passenger 3.0.9
• and many more updated packages that you can check in the Changelog.

Enjoy!

BitNami RubyStack now more Cloud-ready than ever

BitNami RubyStack is one of our most popular stacks and it enables anyone to be up and running with a Ruby on Rails environment in no time. It comes in three flavors: as a native installer, a virtual appliance or an Amazon Machine Image.

For those of you using RubyStack to power their Cloud development, you will be happy to know that the latest version of RubyStack has bundled and configured out-of-the-box support for Amazon's recently announced AWS SDK for Ruby. This SDK allows you to build Ruby applications that tap into the cost-effective, scalable, and reliable AWS cloud. It ships example code and a Quick Guide to get started in minutes using AWS infrastructure services.

For instance, you can do the following to upload files to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3):

 1. Install BitNami RubyStack in your machine. Windows, OS X and Linux are supported.

 2. Go to Start -> BitNami RubyStack -> Ruby Console on Windows or run the "rubyconsole.sh" script on OS X or Linux.

 3. Download the sample files from GitHub: 

$ git clone git://github.com/amazonwebservices/aws-sdk-for-ruby.git 
$ cd aws-sdk-for-ruby/samples/ 

 4. Create a file named config.yml in the samples directory as follows:

# Fill in your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key 
# http://aws.amazon.com/security-credentials 
access_key_id: REPLACE_WITH_ACCESS_KEY_ID 
secret_access_key: REPLACE_WITH_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY 

5. Run a sample script with the Ruby interpreter. For example, to run the "s3/upload_file.rb" sample:

$ echo "Hello, World!" > helloworld.txt 
$ ruby s3/upload_file.rb unique-bucket-name helloworld.txt 

You can also find a sample script to start and login to a AWS EC2 machine at "ec2/run_instance.rb".

 $ ruby ec2/run_instance.rb 
Using AMI: ami-8c1fece5 
Generated keypair ruby-sample-1311166524, fingerprint: d2:11:ff:36:ce:6c:64:da:58:58:35:15:3b:f0:33:d1:fb:89:58:55 
Using security group: ruby-sample-1311166532 
Launched instance i-818d59e0, status: running 

 If you are a PHP developer, the AWS SDK for PHP is already included in the Stack.

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