rvm (ruby version manager) is a kick ass tool that I use on a daily basis. It allows you to install lots of ruby versions, gems, gem sets, and what have you. You can test your app against new (or old) versions of ruby easily. You can also use it to manage rubies on a production system, for all users of that system.

Yes, you heard me correctly. After needling Wayne into getting root support built into RVM so many weeks ago, this is really the only way that I use it. There are a few gotchas however. I will go through my best practices for installing rvm system wide in this article.

updated: 8/1/2010 : @sutto and @wayneeseguin have baked root support into rvm – use that!

Continue reading ‘rooting with rvm’ »

One of the interesting paradigms in the technology field now days is “cloud”. I think that I have seen it bandied about more then “web 2.0″ a few years ago. It’s hit required buzz word compliance status in market-speak. I believe that is it over used, misunderstood and used to mislead. Let’s cut through the hyperbole and see what is really going on.
Continue reading ‘With Clouds, Come a Chance of Rain’ »

One of the things that I get to do is advise folks on web application architecture and backend process optimization. All of that is to say that I need to know how certain versions of things like ruby perform under different loads, and be able to advise people on when and where to deploy each one. For testing ruby and ruby programs, RVM is invaluable. I’ll take you through how I tested a slew of ruby version automagically in this article.

Continue reading ‘Using RVM to benchmark Ruby’ »

After fooling around with creating a VM for the RailsBridge Bugmash insta-server, I decided that it was just too unwieldy. There are simply too many moving parts to make a small VM. That got me thinking…

Continue reading ‘RailsBridge Bugmash VM Script’ »