RVM, REE and Postgres on OSX Snow Leopard

I have jumped on board the RVM bandwagon for managing my development environments. I recently sold my Mac Pro on eBay and have a fresh new 27" iMac on the way. So I thought I’d document this part of the install process and a couple of gotcha’s.

First, grab the Postgres one-click installer and run it. Or you can build & compile it from source. Then for RVM and the latest REE follow these instructions;

# install readline for OSX if needed - check if it already exists in /usr/local/lib
wget ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf readline-6.1.tar.gz
cd readline-6.1
./configure && make && sudo make install

# install RVM from github
bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )
 
# edit your .bash_login (or profile) and add this at the bottom
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

# check RVM has installed OK, look for 'is a function'
. ~/.bash_login
type rvm | head -n1
rvm notes

# install REE, or whatever Ruby you'd like
rvm install ree -C --enable-shared,--with-readline-dir=/usr/local

# show what rubies are installed
rvm list

# set REE as the default and current ruby
rvm --default ree

# check your working directories
which ruby && which gem

# In general I use Bundler for apps, but for .irbrc and some scripts I need these too
gem install wirble awesome_print hirb bundler mysql heroku

# and finally for the postgres (pg) gem
sudo env ARCHFLAGS='-arch i386' gem install pg

I’m surprised by how few steps it takes these days (to get Ruby & Rails up and running with a database), four years ago this was a different story altogether. With tools like RVM and Bundler, it couldn’t be simpler.