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General requirements
The most up-to-date instructions can be found within each distribution in the doc/README_FOR_APP file. You can run Tracks on your own (local) computer (MacOS X, Windows and Linux are all supported), or on your web host’s server, in which case you will have access to Tracks from any internet connected computer. Specific installation instructions apply to the different platforms, but you need the following basic components:
- Ruby (1.8.2 or 1.8.4, don’t use 1.8.3)
- Rails (included in the download package)
- a database and the Ruby bindings to interface with it. MySQL is probably the most popular, but you can also use SQLite3 (an SQLite3 database file is included in the download package, ready to go) or Postgresql.
- You also need a web server of some kind. The lightweight, but very functional WEBrick is built into the application if you’re running Tracks on your own machine. Alternatively, you can use Apache, lighttpd or Mongrel (much faster than WEBrick but very lightweight and easy to configure).
Getting Ruby installed
- The easiest way: Install Locomotive if you are on MacOS X, or InstantRails if you are on Windows. Both will install Ruby, a webserver and a database for you in a self-contained package, and make it easy to start and stop the web server.
- If you don’t want to go down that route, there’s a Windows installer for Ruby here, and the source (for MacOS X and Linux) is here. If you’re on Linux, there are probably packages available for Ruby through your distribution’s package manager. However, unless you’re on Linux, I’d strongly recommend using one of the bundled installations listed above.
Getting a database and bindings installed
I’ve you use one of the ‘all-in-one’ packages above, this step isn’t necessary. Otherwise, you’ll need to get “SQLite3”http://www.sqlite.org/ and the sqlite3-ruby bindings if you want to use SQLite3. To install the bindings, install RubyGems then issue the command:
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
and select the correct version depending on your platform.
If you want to install MySQL, follow the link to the MySQL website above to find out how to download and install it.
Specific instructions for various platforms: