Mac as the ideal development platform? Maybe for the iPhone I hear you mumble. Until I found this nice, clean and extremely flexible solution I wholeheartedly agreed. The basic scheme goes like this:

As foundation I am now running a clean, basically stock OS X. On top of this I am running a bunch of VMware Fusion Virtual machines, ranging from OS X, Ubuntu down to Windows XP ;-). Basically I am running all the development environment in Ubuntu and doing all the research and editing on OS X natively.

To achieve this I have a Ubuntu Server 8.10 with PostgreSQL, Apache 2 prefork, Ruby Enterprise Edition and Rails 2.2.2 installed. This Linux VM shares my Mac OS X Project folder via VMware HGFS mount directly in /var/www/projectname. This setup enables me to work with Textmate and save/copy/mess around locally on my Mac OS X host system (10.5.6) and immediately have the changes reflected in the Ubuntu machine. So the basic workflow is the same than before with having RoR etc. installed locally on my OS X. Hope I made myself clear!?

Here is how to get there (you may have to adjust the version numbers and replace cabchap&tom with the required domain/user):

1. Install Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Server CD, using F4 – minimal system, then press “Install” and later select “Basic Ubuntu Server”, “SSH Server” and “PostgreSQL Server”.
2. sudo apt-get update -o Acquire::http::No-Cache=True
3. sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
4. sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libpq-dev apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-prefork-dev libreadline5-dev git-core
5. wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/48623/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215.tar.gz
6. tar xvfz ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215.tar.gz
7. cd ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/
8. sudo ./installer
9. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/ /opt/ruby-enterprise
10. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/gem /usr/bin/gem
11. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby
12. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/rake /usr/bin/rake
13. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/irb /usr/bin/irb
14. sudo ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/rails /usr/bin/rails
15. sudo /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/bin/passenger-install-apache2-module
16. sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf [and enter the following:]
    # General stuff
    ServerSignature Off
    LogLevel warn
     
    # Set Rails mode
    RailsEnv development
     
    # Lock down GIT files
    <Files ~ “^.git”>
        Order allow,deny
        Deny from all
    </Files>
     
    # Prepare for Rails
    LoadModule passenger_module /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
    PassengerRoot /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
    PassengerRuby /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.6-20081215/bin/ruby
17. cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
18. cp default default.orig
19. sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default [fill only with:]
    <VirtualHost *>
      ServerName dev.cabchap.com
      ServerAdmin devmaster@cabchap.com
      DocumentRoot /var/www/cabchap/public
      ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
      CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
    </VirtualHost>
20. cd /var/www
21. sudo mkdir cabchap
22. sudo chown tom cabchap
23. rails -d postgresql cabchap
24. sudo -u postgres createuser cabchap [answer yes to superuser]
25. sudo vi /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/pg_hba.conf
     host all all 192.168.0.0/16 md5
    Replace:
    local all all ident sameuser
    with this line:
    local all all md5
26. sudo vi /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf
    listen_addresses=’*’
27. sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 restart
28. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
29. Finally configure the VMware shared folder in VMware settings for the relevant machine:
30. Name: cabchap (this name is mounted in fstab)
31. Folder: dev (in Projects/Something/dev)
32. In etc/fstab enter
     .host:/ /var/www vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=tom,gid=tom 0 0

Let me know if this interesting for someone out there. If it is, I will invest more time in clarifying these quick draft notes. May this be helpful.