OS X Quickstart

Follow these instructions to get Alaveteli running locally on an OS X machine.

Note: This guide is currently incomplete. Please help by posting issues to the alaveteli-dev Google group or by submitting pull requests.

Known issues

Missing packages

We currently lack installation instructions for the following packages. This may cause warnings or test failures. Example warnings are given.

• wdg-html-validator

    WARNING: HTML validation script /usr/bin/validate not found
  

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for OS X. It is preferred over alternatives such as MacPorts and Fink. If you haven't already installed Homebrew, run the command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

Next, install packages required by Alaveteli:

brew install catdoc elinks gnuplot gs imagemagick libmagic libyaml links mutt poppler tnef wkhtmltopdf wv xapian unrtf

Install memcached

Alaveteli uses memcached.

brew install memcached
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp /usr/local/Cellar/memcached/*/com.danga.memcached.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.danga.memcached.plist

Install postgresql

Alaveteli uses PostgreSQL by default. If you've tested Alaveteli with MySQL or SQLite, let us know in the alaveteli-dev Google group.

brew install postgresql
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.0.4/org.postgresql.postgres.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.postgresql.postgres.plist

PDF Toolkit

Download the DMG file and install.

Ruby

Install rvm

RVM is the preferred way to install multiple Ruby versions on OS X. Alaveteli uses Ruby 1.8.7. The following commands assume you are using the Bash shell.

bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
echo 'export CC=gcc-4.2' >> .bash_profile
echo [[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"' >> .bash_profile
source .bash_profile
rvm install 1.8.7
rvm system ; rvm gemset export system.gems ; rvm 1.8.7 ; rvm gemset import system
rvm install 1.9.2
rvm use 1.9.2 --default

Install mahoro and pg with flags

The mahoro and pg gems require special installation commands. Rubygems must be downgraded to 1.6.2 to avoid deprecation warnings when running tests.

rvm 1.8.7
gem update --system 1.6.2
gem install mahoro -- --with-ldflags="-L/usr/local/Cellar/libmagic/5.09/lib" --with-cppflags="-I/usr/local/Cellar/libmagic/5.09/include"
env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install pg

Alaveteli

The following is mostly from INSTALL.md.

Configure database

Creates Alaveteli databases and an foi user with password foi.

echo "CREATE DATABASE foi_development encoding = 'UTF8';
CREATE DATABASE foi_test encoding = 'UTF8';
CREATE USER foi WITH CREATEUSER;
ALTER USER foi WITH PASSWORD 'foi';
ALTER USER foi WITH CREATEDB;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE foi_development TO foi;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE foi_test TO foi;       
ALTER DATABASE foi_development OWNER TO foi;
ALTER DATABASE foi_test OWNER TO foi;" | psql -h localhost template1

Clone Alaveteli

We don't want to vendor Rails, as it causes problems locally.

git clone https://github.com/sebbacon/alaveteli.git
git submodule init

sed -i~ 's/\[submodule "vendor/rails"\]//' .git/config

sed -i~ 's/url = git:\/\/github.com\/rails\/rails.git//' .git/config
git submodule update

Note: Due to Markdown bugs, the first sed command above does not display properly if it appears in blockquote.

Configure Alaveteli

Copy the example configuration files and configure database.yml.

cp -f config/general.yml-example config/general.yml
cp -f config/memcached.yml-example config/memcached.yml
cp -f config/database.yml-example config/database.yml
sed -i~ 's/<username>/foi/' config/database.yml
sed -i~ 's/<password>/foi/' config/database.yml
sed -i~ 's/  port: 5432//' config/database.yml
sed -i~ 's/ # PostgreSQL 8.1 pretty please//' config/database.yml

Bundler

Alaveteli doesn't currently use Bundler. However, you may use the following Gemfile to install the gems.

source :rubygems
gem 'rails', '2.3.14'
gem 'pg'

# in vendor/gems
gem 'json', '~> 1.5.1'
gem 'locale', '>= 2.0.5'
gem 'gettext', '>= 1.9.3'
gem 'fast_gettext', '>= 0.4.8'
# can't activate rack if ~> used
gem 'rack', '= 1.1.0'
gem 'rdoc', '~> 2.4.3'
gem 'recaptcha', '~> 0.3.1', :require => 'recaptcha/rails'
# can't activate rspec if ~> used
gem 'rspec', '= 1.3.1'
# can't activate rspec-rails if ~> used
gem 'rspec-rails', '= 1.3.3'
gem 'routing-filter', '~> 0.2.3'
gem 'will_paginate', '~> 2.3.11'

gem 'mahoro'
gem 'memcache-client'
# :require avoids "already initialized constant" warnings
gem 'rmagick', :require => 'RMagick'
gem 'test-unit', '~> 1.2.3' if RUBY_VERSION.to_f >= 1.9
gem 'tmail'
gem 'vpim'
gem 'xapian-full'
gem 'xml-simple'
gem 'zip'

Then, follow the instructions to use Bundler with Rails 2.3.

Finally, install the gems and finish setting up Alaveteli. Note that installing the xapian-full gem may take several minutes.

rvm 1.8.7
gem install bundler
bundle
bundle exec rake db:create:all
bundle exec rake db:migrate
bundle exec rake db:test:prepare