Getting started with rails? Must have gems?

Question

I\'m starting work on a project using Rails, but I\'m waiting for the 3rd edition of the pragmatic rails book to come out before I purchase a book.

Anyway, my questi

Answer 1

The only gems you need are:

• Rails
• Rake

If you "gem install rails" you'll get everything you need for Rails. You only need gems when you need them, so it's not worth worrying about before then.

EDIT: Actually there are a couple more you'll probably need:

• mysql - or whatever Ruby database driver you need
• mongrel - you don't necessarily need this until production, but it's nice to use in dev/test too
• ZenTest - I use this mainly for "autotest" so that my tests run in a console window whenever my source files change

There could be many other gems that help you but we'd need more info from you to know if they're applicable, eg:

• Web scraping (hpricot)
• CSV (fastercsv)
• Amazon S3 support (aws-s3)
• Image manipulation (rmagick)
• Graphing (gruff) - I use this as a plugin
• Role-based security (role_requirement) - This one is a plugin too